title: the deceptive nature of hillary clinton is right in line with communism
text: posted on october   by claire bernish 
  censorship by facebook has become a thorn in the side of nearly anyone with an opinion differing from the narrative touted by the corporate press  for instance sentiments not praising hillary clinton  and now through both a new report from reuters and emails published by wikileaks we have insight into why certain posts are targeted 
  facebook relies on a combination of artificial intelligence and human judgment to remove posts deemed offensive violent or otherwise unacceptable to its community standards  but precisely how the ultimate call to take down posts pages and groups are made remains unknown 
  and facebook takedowns no matter the improvements to the process the social media behemoth claims to make have been no less controversial or questionable  and those whose posts are censored have little if any recourse to argue their case 
  recent examples of headscratchers which led to an international uproar include facebooks removal of the iconic vietnam war photograph of phan th? kim phúc  who at just yearsold was captured on film by an associated press photographer fleeing the aftermath of an errant napalm attack near a buddhist pagoda in the village of trang bang 
  that photograph helped cement in the collective american mind the horrors of the war and ultimately fueled the success of the antiwar effort  but facebook arbitrarily pulled the image for nudity  and proceeded even to ban the page of the conservative prime minister of norway for also posting the image 
  ultimately the social media company reversed course in that case  but not before also taking down the equally iconic image of civil rights leader rosa parks arrest 
  but taking down of the image of kim phúc might not have been simply an error of ai since it had been used as a specific example in training the teams responsible for content removal two unnamed former facebook employees told reuters  
  trainers told contentmonitoring staffers that the photo violated facebook policy despite its historical significance because it depicted a naked child in distress photographed without her consent the employees told reuters 
  in the final decision to reverse that censorship facebook head of the community operations division justin osofsky admitted it had been a mistake 
  according to reuters  to whom many current and former facebook employees spoke on condition of anonymity the process of judging which posts deserve to be remove and which should be allowed will in certain instances be left to the discretion of a small cadre of the companys elite executives 
  in addition to osofsky global policy chief monika bickert government relations chief joel kaplan vice president for public policy and communications elliot schrage and facebook chief operating officer sheryl sandberg make the final call on censorship and appeals 
  all five studied at harvard and four of them have both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the elite institution all but sandberg hold law degrees three of the executives have longstanding personal ties to sandberg the outlet notes chief executive mark zuckerberg also occasionally offers guidance in difficult decisions but there are others 
  company spokeswoman christine chen explained facebook has a broad diverse and global network involved in content policy and enforcement with different managers and senior executives being pulled in depending on the region and the issue at hand 
  for those on the receiving end of what could only be described as lopsided and inexplicable censorship recourse is generally limited and can be nearly impossible to come by often the nature of posts and pages removed insinuates political motivations on the part of the censors 
  indeed and once again flaring international controversy facebook disabled  among others the accounts of editors of quds and shehab new agency  prominent palestinian media organizations  without explanation or even a specific example given for justification 
  although three of four palestinianfocused accounts were restored facebook refused to comment to either reuters or the accounts owners why the decision was reversed except to say it had been an error 
  in fact although chen and other facebook insiders spoke with reuters directly about contentious content removal policies and procedures many details of the processes remain covert and sorely intransparent to the public who is so often forced to cope with the consequences 
  earlier this year an exposé by gizmodo showing facebooks suppression of conservative outlets via its trending topics section appeared to evidence extreme bias in favor of liberal and corporate media mainstays alternative media too which provides reports counter to the mainstream political and foreign policy paradigm has often been the subject of controversial takedowns censorship and suppressive tactics  either directly by facebook or through convoluted algorithms and artificial intelligence bots 
  however considering sheryl sandberg and her loyalists populate the toplevel group deciding the fate for content removal complaints it would appear wikileaks could provide answers for both post censorship and suppression of outlets not vowing complete fealty to the preferred leftleaning narrative 
  in a june   email to clinton campaign chair john podesta  an enormous cache of whose emails are still being published on a daily basis by wikileaks  penned by sandberg in response to condolences on the death of her husband states  in part 
  and i still want hrc to win badly i am still here to help as i can she came over and was magical with my kids 
  after a wave of post removals and temporary page bans it appears facebook has begun to come to its senses for what actually violates community standards  and what might have political worth contrary to the views of its executives 
  senior members of facebooks policy team recently posted about the laxing of rules governing community standards which  though welcome  might only provide temporary relief quoted by the wall street journal  they wrote  
  in the weeks ahead were going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy significant or important to the public interesteven if they might otherwise violate our standards 
  while the social media giant deems itself a technology and not news platform facebook is still the bouncing off point for issues of interest for an overwhelming percentage of its users although it perhaps has some responsibility in regard to the removal of certain content putting censorship in the hands of only a few individuals in certain instances is a chilling reminder of the fragility  and grave importance  of free speech dont forget to follow the dc clothesline on facebook and twitter please help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks share this