By Adam Pedesclaux
Its common knowledge that we don’t see everything that is posted on Facebook because certain things are censored. But what doesn’t get said is that the U.S. government and various bomb and weapons manufacturers, banks, and even companies like Nestle and Starbucks control the filter on what we see. Everything we see or read comes through this filter. It makes sense that users would be sheltered from certain violent or hateful content, but with this power to regulate our feeds also comes the ability to censor “undesirable” political content. For the censors, that often means anything that criticizes the U.S. or any other imperialist governments or various companies. After the 2016 election and in the beginnings of the Mueller-Trump foolishness, the same-colored wool that they tried to put over our eyes after 9/11 to push the Patriot Act to better spy and censor us was once again drawn over our eyes—this time under the pretense of stopping “fake news.”
To save us from the monster of “fake news” after the 2016 election, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council, which is a NATO lobbying group. For those who don’t know, the Atlantic Council is a group representing government and business interests, with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and General Atomic being high level members, as well as various domestic and foreign banks including Goldman Sachs and a few oil companies. Lower level members even include Reuters, one of the most commonly sourced news organizations. A “nonpartisan” organization as they describe themselves (yet funded by the never nonpartisan U.S. government and various other governments of NATO nations as well as bomb manufacturers, banks, and many, many more), they lobby for pro-war and business policies (i.e., anti people policies) and now have a major say in what we can see on our Facebook feeds.
It only makes sense, then, that many anti-war and pro-peace pages have been removed without reasonable excuses from Facebook, and they have even attempted to remove teleSUR a few times, a Venezuelan-based news organization that shows the opposite side of the aggressive stance U.S. media has taken against the country. Perhaps this should serve as a reminder not to trust everything on the internet (especially social media) and question the limited perspectives offered to us on these broad issues when we need all sides to formulate opinions.