Members of the Pennsylvania Republican Party are being censored on Facebook and their calls for attention about the election interference from Big Tech is purposely being ignored by the local media. While Republicans being censored on social media platforms is not new, local media outlets not paying any heed to such censorship is worth taking a note of.
High-ranking officials from Pennsylvania’s various chapters have said that their appeals to local media outlets were largely ignored. “We reached out to Philly.com, PhillyVoice, 6ABC, FOX 29, NBC 10, CBS 3, and just about every other letter in the alphabet, but they ignore our press releases,” revealed an insider.
The Facebook page of Concord Republicans was also taken down just days ahead of the election and upon reaching out to Facebook for appealing the decision, the page admins were simply told that Facebook would look into the issue.
“Just 3 days before the election and a major get out the vote effort, Delco’s Concord Twp Republican Party’s Facebook page – Concord Republicans – has just disappeared. Gone. No warnings. No strikes. Facebook’s response? “We will look into it.” What do you think the odds are this doesn’t get fixed until after the Election? Maybe Facebook didn’t like that Concord Republicans was highlighting the diversity of support for Trump with pictures like below?” wrote the Delaware County GOP on Facebook.
It hasn’t been the first time that Facebook had taken down groups and pages that were in support of Republican candidate and incumbent president Donald Trump.
Facebook, for instance, took down a group comprising 29,000 women supporters of Donald Trump. After the President tweeted at Facebook asking the social media platform to restore the page immediately, Facebook did so and stated that the group was taken down by mistake. “This group was removed in error and we have since restored it,” said Facebook, as reported by Your Content.
Priscilla Confrey, the co-director of New Jersey Women for Trump, after their group was wrongfully suspended and restored later, commented that Facebook’s actions were “absolutely appalling.”
“Three days before Election Day? That is absolutely appalling. I just think these companies, these social media groups, have too much power. They offer to you to open up a group on their social media platform, and you could have 30,000 members, and they shut it down without telling you anything,” said Confrey.
With every passing day towards the presidential elections, social media platforms become a key channel to promote presidential candidates and for supporters to mobilize to vote for their candidate. At such a juncture, Facebook cutting the access to its platform to only a part of the political ecosystem, is only making the claims of right-wing censorship on social media even stronger.
