Conservatives fight back vs. Facebook censorship

Political conservatives who utilize the social-media site Facebook have long complained of pages being flagged for political incorrectness, blocked by Facebook itself or swamped by leftist "trolls."

Now a new approach is being taken to use the power of social media to fight back against itself.

The conservative news aggregator RedFlagNews.com, which bills itself as "a wise choice for those looking to expand their news experience outside the liberal mainstream media," is beta testing a new cooperative venture called Social PostUp, which is designed to give conservatives their voice back on Facebook.

According to the Social PostUp website, "Posts to your fans are now being censored, propagated with prejudice or just outright blocked due to:

"Facebook's 'EdgeRank' algorithm
"Facebook's Recent 'Bait-and-Switch' with promoted posts
"Facebook's NSA, DOJ, CIA, Obama [administration], government cooperation and censoring
"'Negative' page feedback by paid 'leftist' trolls
"Facebook's clear double-standard for conservative pages
"Facebook's adherence to and practice of 'political correctness.'

"It's time for the conservative movement to join forces in the fight against suppression by Facebook, the world's largest social network," RedFlag explains.

The plan is to link together independent or conservative Facebook page owners with at least 5,000 page fans to commit to monitor, "like" and share other members' posts, essentially creating a social network within the social network to "magnify our collective voice."

RedFlag believes this will promote growth, "EdgeRank" and "viral-ability" of participating members' pages.

The problem with a leftist bent on Facebook goes beyond just suspicion after the founder of the social media giant got cozy with President Obama at a White House dinner in 2011.

In July 2013, evangelical Christian and actor Kirk Cameron alerted his 650,000 Facebook fans that links to his latest film, "Unstoppable," had been blocked by Facebook, which had reportedly labeled the links "abusive" and "unsafe."

Facebook eventually restored the links with the explanation it had been a "mistake" with the spam-filtering mechanism.

Cameron, however, attributed the restoration to the outcry from his fans: "Because of your firm, loving, and clear voice, not only did Facebook welcome us back, YouTube also removed its block on our 'Unstoppable movie' trailer. We are back online with full access."

And in September, as WND reported, the group Truckers Ride for the Constitution found Facebook shut down their page, "Truckers to Shutdown America," which had accumulated 86,000 "likes" within days of its launch.

"Political opponents attacked the Truckers to Shutdown America page within days, and they exploited a little known (to the public) feature on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter called 'community standards' flagging, which allows them to instantaneously shut down an account on these social media platforms," the truckers group explained in a press release. "[A]n administrator of the page offended someone by saying, 'God bless you, and God bless America.'"

The Social PostUp plan may not be able to stop outright censorship by Facebook, but its plan would seek to counter efforts to drown out conservatives by dramatically boosting the attention they receive in social media.