Facebook attempted to influence the outcome of the Kyle Rittenhouse case by shaping public opinion against Rittenhouse before the trial even began.
Months before Rittenhouse got his day in court, Facebook staff removed posts in support of now-vindicated Rittenhouse after he shot three people in self-defence.
According to the New York Post, Facebook quickly flagged Rittenhouse as a “mass murderer”:
“We’ve designated the shooting in Kenosha a mass murder and are removing posts in support of the shooter,” a Facebook spokesperson stated in the days following the incident.
“We don’t allow symbols, praise or support of dangerous individuals or organizations on Facebook. We define dangerous as things like: terrorist activity, organized hate or violence, mass or serial murder, human trafficking, criminal or harmful activity,” states Facebook’s official policy on the issue.
However, Rittenhouse was clearly none of the above, yet the social media giant still treated him as such.
Thepostmillennnial.com reports: Perhaps more alarmingly, Facebook often didn’t outright censor posts, but rather, “shadow banned” them. This means that users didn’t face any direction from Facebook, and their post stayed up, but it was partially or wholly hidden from the public.
Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center commented on the subject, “One of the big things that they did was manipulate the search engine so you couldn’t even find any references to Kyle Rittenhouse.”
The Post article concludes with, “Social media now qualify for various legal protections by claiming to be ‘neutral platforms.’ Yet Big Tech is developing a strong record of suppressing the truth in the service of clear political bias. Something has to change.”
by Sean Adl-Tabatabai
