Facebook is engaged in an aggressive censorship campaign that helps Tammy Baldwin.
Facebook has been ramping up censorship of factual stories that hurt Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in an exceptionally close U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin.
Most recently: On Oct. 19, Facebook removed a factual story reporting on the biases of the U.S. Senate debate panelists and data team members. For example, one data team member, reporter Darrielle Fair, called former President Donald Trump a “thug” on Facebook.
Fair’s own post wasn’t censored by Facebook, but Facebook deleted Wisconsin Right Now’s story alerting voters and debate watchers to her bias. Facebook then placed a restricted label on a Wisconsin Right Now co-editor’s highly-read Facebook page for sharing the Baldwin/Hovde stories.
Read the censored story here.
Facebook previously even removed a reader’s post that said, “Vote for Hovde!” labeling it spam.
The race is widely regarded as a toss-up. The more Baldwin sinks in the polls, the more it seems that Facebook (Meta) ramps up censorship to help her.
Wisconsin Right Now is Wisconsin’s top-read conservative news site outside talk radio, and it is one of the only highly read breaking news conservative news sites in Wisconsin. WRN has repeatedly won awards for its factual reporting. For example, WRN won gold Milwaukee Press Club awards for the best investigative, public service, and news reporting in the State of Wisconsin.
Yet Facebook is blatantly – and outrageously – interfering in the close Wisconsin race for U.S. Senate by repeatedly removing our stories, but only when they aren’t helpful to Baldwin.
Just days before, Facebook repeatedly removed another Wisconsin Right Now news story that alerted voters about an “America First” candidate on the ballot who was recruited by Democrats in a deceptive attempt to defeat Republican Eric Hovde.
More election interference – Facebook removing WRN's story warning conservative voters about Thomas Leager's candidacy. pic.twitter.com/ncYFRZSFKn
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) October 14, 2024
To boil it down – Democrats are trying to trick conservative voters into choosing the Democratic-recruited candidate to destroy Hovde’s candidacy, according to the Associated Press, and now Facebook (Meta) is trying to prevent conservative voters from learning about the scheme.
In the most blatant example of Facebook censorship, on Oct. 13, Facebook removed a post sharing the story by WRN reader Dan Dahlke. “Vote for Hovde!” he wrote. Facebook removed the post, insisting, ludicrously, that it “goes against our Community Standards on spam.”
The story in question, which we published that same day, simply alerts readers to an Associated Press investigation.
We told Hovde what Facebook was doing in that instance, and he said: “This is Facebook engaging in election interference again. It is a well-established fact that Democrats have orchestrated a phony candidate under the America first name to confuse voters. This is hurting our democracy and Facebook is trying to unfairly interfere with an election.”
Facebook has targeted Wisconsin Right Now in the past. Lasty May, Facebook removed a Wisconsin Right Now news story that accurately reported that Trump led President Joe Biden in a CNN poll, calling it “spam.”
Facebook also briefly deleted Wisconsin Right Now’s page altogether and dialed back our reach and banned us from posting live videos for a time due to our accurate news analysis of legal questions surrounding the Kyle Rittenhouse gun charge, which was subsequently thrown out by the judge. The other violation? Sharing the iconic Falling Man story by Esquire on 9/11.
More election interference against Hovde by #meta https://t.co/EFXm7fTH3q pic.twitter.com/gH6ov1Wkxg
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) October 13, 2024
More election interference by #Facebook against Eric Hovde https://t.co/EFXm7fTH3q pic.twitter.com/IIgWviXLIm
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) October 13, 2024
Election interference by #Facebook in the #Wisconsin Senate race to hurt Hovde https://t.co/EFXm7fUeSY pic.twitter.com/cUYElnRtaU
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) October 13, 2024
Bizarrely, Facebook allowed some readers to post the Leager story but not others. But it’s happened repeatedly and every removed story reduces the ability for Wisconsin voters to get factual information about Baldwin.
