Facebook Gives ‘Fact Checker’ Snopes The Power To Shadowban Conservatives

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Are your Facebook posts being shown to your friends and followers — or have you been “shadowbanned” by Snopes for sharing conservative content on the social media platform?

Shadowbanning is a new concept in social media and involves banning a user from a platform in such a way that the banned user is unaware of the ban. A shadowbanned user will be able to see their own posts, but other users, including friends and followers, do not get to see them in their newsfeed.

Thanks to new Facebook rules, conservatives who share news articles that Snopes decide to suppress, or opinion pieces that CEO David Mikkelson considers deplorable, are having their Facebook posts hidden from their friends, family and followers.

Snopes was tapped by Facebook as one of its approved fact-checking groups and given the ability to mark stories on the site as “true” or “false”. While this idea sounds fine in theory, in practice it has had a chilling effect on free speech, while limiting the free expression of conservatives on the internet.

Let’s look at a recent case in point. This past week many conservatives shared a news articlewritten by this author about a double murder in Huntsville, Alabama. Two men were arrested and charged, including a Mexican Sinaloa cartel employee who was later detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

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