Another day, another publication on the receiving end of Facebook's politically motivated censorship. This time it's the Epoch Times, a global newspaper founded by Chinese refugees fleeing persecution by the Communist Party in China. Facebook has reportedly blacklisted ads from the Epoch Times following the publication and airing of a series of smears by NBC and MSNBC.





The Epoch Times has attracted negative attention to itself from many on the Left for publishing conservative content, this attention reaching a fever pitch on August 20th when Rachel Maddow dedicated 30 minutes of prime-time coverage to the Epoch Times during her eponymous program when she declared the publisher was a peddler of "conspiracy theories".





On the same day, NBC published an article in which the Epoch Times was smeared with similar accusations. Rather than giving concrete examples, the authors resorted to character assassination after lobbing their vague and unsubstantiated complaints.





Of course this by itself would not be newsworthy; the Left has for years now embraced the shady tactic of labeling things it disagrees with "conspiracies" and people it disagrees with "conspiracy theorists". What is problematic here is that Facebook seems to have taken notice of these smears and used them as pretext to blacklist the Epoch Times from advertising on the platform.





How exactly do we define "conspiracy theory"? Is the media's favorite yet ridiculous and unsubstantiated refrain that President Trump is a Russian Agent a conspiracy? Should anyone who reported - or continues to report - on this possibility be labeled a conspiracy theorist and banned?





Of course one's political leanings decide what is conspiratorial and what is not, which means Facebook's own political leanings will necessarily determine who can exist on its platform and who cannot.





This all gets back to the fact that Facebook is a corporation operating the largest public forum in human history. On their platform they are God, and their decisions are opaque even to those that they may effect; it's entirely possible for Facebook (or any other social media company) to "shadowban" a publisher such that their content's reach is artifically reduced, or they do not appear in search results. This allows Facebook to manipulate public opinion and sentiment on its platform without anyone having a clue.





Are we truly a free society if two or three politically biased corporations have absolute power over online information?





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