{"id":373973,"date":"2018-08-19T03:26:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T02:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/facebook-censors-conservative-education-page-says-it-was-a-mistake-but-few-are-convinced-rt-us-news\/"},"modified":"2018-08-19T03:26:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-19T02:26:12","slug":"facebook-censors-conservative-education-page-says-it-was-a-mistake-but-few-are-convinced-rt-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/facebook-censors-conservative-education-page-says-it-was-a-mistake-but-few-are-convinced-rt-us-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook &#8216;censors&#8217; conservative education page, says it was a mistake, but few are convinced \u2014 RT US News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        Facebook says it had mistakenly deleted videos and limited the reach of US conservative educational organization PragerU. The content has now been restored, but PragerU supporters don&#8217;t think it was an accident.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>PragerU (short for Prager University, after its founder Dennis Prager) says nine of its posts reached none of its three million-odd followers, and at least two videos were deleted for <em>&#8220;hate speech,&#8221;<\/em> in what many conservatives see as part of Facebook&#8217;s ongoing censorship campaign. Facebook has now apologized and restored the content, but has offered no explanation beyond &#8220;we&#8217;re looking into it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We mistakenly removed these videos and have restored them because they don&#8217;t break our standards. This will reverse any reduction in content distribution you\u2019ve experienced. We\u2019re very sorry and are continuing to look into what happened with your Page.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Facebook (@facebook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/facebook\/status\/1030613023268855808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 18, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/prageru\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PragerU<\/a> is a non-profit organization creating short educational videos discussing a wide array of topics from a conservative perspective. The videos, while not generally covering current news, offer pushbacks against most of the liberal talking points, including gun ownership, oppression of women, trust in the media and climate change. In 2017 PragerU had a run-in with Google after the company restricted or demonetized 37 of its videos. PragerU filed a lawsuit, which was then dismissed by a district court judge.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook, Twitter and other social media are under massive fire from conservatives as the platforms claim they step up their game against <em>&#8220;hate speech&#8221;<\/em> and for <em>&#8220;conversational health.&#8221;<\/em> In practice this has so far mostly meant bans and suspensions for conservative speakers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In all seriousness have you ever made a similar mistake with such a high profile \u201cliberal leaning\u201d prestigious university similar to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/prageru?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@prageru<\/a> ?<\/p>\n<p>That truly is the test. <\/p>\n<p>Please provide an example of same and you will be exonerated\u2014 failure of which is an admission of vile bias.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Manny_Ottawa (@manny_ottawa) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/manny_ottawa\/status\/1030802827981934592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 18, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>The most prominent example in the recent days was that of InfoWars and its highly-controversial host Alex Jones. InfoWars content was simultaneously removed by Youtube, Facebook and Apple, its pages and channels shut down. Twitter held out for a few days, then handed Jones a week-long suspension for &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/435974-alex-jones-banned-twitter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">abusive behavior<\/a>.&#8221; Other casualties in the censorship campaign include <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/435942-facebook-telesur-censorship-venezuela\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/436190-facebook-removes-occupy-london\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pro-Palestinian group Occupy London<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n<div class=\"arcticle__read-more read-more\">\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"read-more__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/436243-caitlin-johnstone-twitter-mccain\/\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n                    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"read-more__cover\" src=\"https:\/\/cdni.rt.com\/files\/2018.08\/thumbnail\/5b774c27dda4c8744e8b4586.jpg\" alt=\"US Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) \u00a9 Jonathan Ernst\"\/><br \/>\n    <\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>US President Donald Trump himself <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/436282-trump-censorship-social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has chimed in on the matter<\/a>, saying his administration won&#8217;t let the discrimination of Republican and conservative voices continue. <em>&#8220;Who is making the choices, because I can already tell you that too many mistakes are being made. Let everybody participate, good &amp; bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!&#8221;<\/em> Trump tweeted.<\/p>\n<p>The disproportionate crackdown on <em>&#8220;offensive&#8221;<\/em> conservative content is not unexpected, considering the Silicon Valley&#8217;s overall left leanings and the social media platforms&#8217; choice of experts on <em>&#8220;conversational health.&#8221;<\/em> Facebook has partnered up with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/435575-facebook-infowars-censorship\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NATO-backed think tank<\/a> Atlantic Council for fact checking, while Twitter has unveiled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/434687-twitter-academics-resistance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a team of Trump haters<\/a> to root out <em>&#8220;uncivil discourse.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/subscribe\/\" id=\"subscribe-focus\">Subscribe<\/a> to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won\u2019t tell you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/usa\/436300-prageru-facebook-censorship-mistake\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Facebook says it had mistakenly deleted videos and limited the reach of US conservative educational organization PragerU. The content has now been restored, but PragerU supporters don&#8217;t think it was an accident. PragerU (short for Prager University, after its founder Dennis Prager) says nine of its posts reached none of its three million-odd followers, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":373887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-373973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}