Consumer complaints against Facebook, the social media giant that repeatedly has censored conservative viewpoints, have doubled every two years, according to a federal report.
The Electronic Information Privacy Center said this week the Federal Trade Commission counted 26,000 pending complaints against Facebook that were submitted while the company was under a consent order to improve its behavior.
The FTC told EPIC in an email there were 8,391 complaints in 2018, 7,245 in 2017, 4,512 in 2016, 1,755 in 2015 and 1,860 in 2014.
“In the eight years since the FTC entered the consent order barring Facebook from making any misrepresentation about user privacy, the FTC has not taken a single enforcement action against the company,” EPIC noted.
WND reporte a Facebook insider confirmed the social-media giant discriminates against conservatives through software manipulation, using “special features” to “deboost” traffic, especially near elections.
The former employee now works with James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, which released a video of her testimony.
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She was a content review analyst for the intellectual property department, dealing with copyright and trademark claims.
As part of her work, she noticed some odd things on various accounts.
For example, one of the company’s engineers, Danny Ben David, had created an item called “actiondeboostlivedistribution” and was attaching it to accounts belonging to conservatives.
The insider said the obvious intent was to prevent distribution of that particular page or video.
It was one of the “methods of suppression,” she said.
It was done by disabling routine features on the page such as notifications.
“I would see it on several different conservatives pages,” she said, noting pages for Mike Cernovich, Steven Crowder and the Daily Caller.
She also pointed out Facebook was doing the throttling and even taking down material without letting the user know.
The insider noted company CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim to Congress, “We want to make sure we have the widest possible expression.”
He said he didn’t want his company acting on the political ideology of content.
But the former Facebook employee said that’s exactly what is not happening.
EPIC had mailed the FTC for details about consumer complaints.
The complaints alleged “Facebook was changing user settings and disclosing personal data to third parties without consent,” EPIC said.
At the time, FTC gathered information and eventually issued a consent order against Facebook.
“In the announcement of the settlement, the FTC stated that ‘Facebook told users they could restrict sharing of data to limited audiences – for example with ‘Friends Only.’ In fact, selecting ‘Friends Only’ did not prevent their information from being shared with third-party applications their friends use.
“And the FTC found unfair or deceptive practices in Facebook’s ‘Verified Apps’ program, which falsely claime to certify the security of participating apps to protect user privacy,” EPIC explained.
The FTC, however, has never charged Facebook with a single violation.
“Not one,” EPIC said.
Last year, however, the company admitted the unlawful transfer of up to 87 million user profiles to the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica.
That was followed by a hearing in Congress in which Zuckerberg testified.
A short time later, the FTC again announced an investigation of Facebook.
But it’s been a year, EPIC said, and the case needs to be expedited.
“The ‘urgency’ to inform the public about this activity is clear given that the one year deadline from when the FTC confirmed that it was investigating Facebook” is approaching, EPIC said.
There also have been no fines, EPIC pointed out.
