Any doubt that there is a serious problem with leftists imitating the Thought Police in George Orwell's 1984 and scouring the Internet to silence free expression pretty much disappears once you see what they were able to have temporarily removed from the Facebook page of Fox Radio's Todd Starnes. And while it's a relief that the post has been restored, consider how many others without the Fox host's visibility may be having their posts removed with far less recourse.
Full text of the post, which has since been restored, along with the takedown notice Starnes reports he received, follow the jump (HT Fire Andrea Mitchell via I Hate the Media; click to enlarge in a separate tab or window):
Meanwhile, searches within Facebook quickly revealed the existence of the may profane and threatening pages, many of which have clearly been up for a long time (WARNING: not safe for work; link to list).
Here are excerpts from Facebook's "Community Standards":
"We remove content and may escalate to law enforcement when we perceive a genuine risk of physical harm, or a direct threat to public safety."
"Facebook does not tolerate bullying or harassment."
"Facebook does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech. ... we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition."
In practice, these are clearly empty words.
Meanwhile, perfectly clean posts like that of Todd Starnes get nuked:
I Hate the Media's J.P. Travis has a larger point about Facebook:
Sharing client info with the government and lying about it, banning conservatives and lying about it, constantly trying to sell us stupid, irritating, useless apps… are we all thoroughly sick and tired of Facebook yet?
Maybe we should be.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
