Greg's Corner

Facebook tries to silence a critic in Geebo

After the daily blog post is published here at Geebo, a link to the day’s blog post is also posted on all of Geebo’s social media accounts. This obviously includes the Geebo Facebook page where we not only post links to the blog but also share some of our users’ ads we think our customers might enjoy.

Yesterday, the blog post was about how the New York Times accused Facebook of a myriad of transgressions, however, the post mainly focused on how Facebook allegedly used some underhanded tactics to try to silence its critics. More often than not, one of our employees also posts links to that day’s blog on their personal Facebook. That employee is also a content creator in their off time who has been critical of Facebook in the past, but they never had a problem with any of the content they’ve posted. That was until yesterday when they received a notification from Facebook stating that the post goes against Facebook’s ‘Community Standards’ and it has been removed from the news feed section. Isn’t it ironic that Facebook removed a post that was critical of them for trying to silence their critics?

It was then decided to see if the post was still live on the Geebo Facebook page and it was gone like it never existed. However, in the case of the Geebo page, there was no notification of the post violating the ever-nebulous community standards such as the one posted above from our employee’s personal page. As far as could be told, the post had been wiped off the face of the earth like it had been black bagged by Facebook’s content police and shipped off to a virtual Gitmo. Our employee has reached out to Facebook but has only received a canned response stating that the matter is under review.

As a whole, we try not to be hyperbolic and we would never claim that Facebook is violating Geebo’s First Amendment right to free speech. Facebook is a private company and has every right to remove whatever content they see fit. However, we are also well within our right to point out what we believe to be evidence supporting some of the allegations that the New York Times has made. It’s one thing to disagree with your critics but it’s another matter completely when you try to rob them of their voice.