Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic candidate in the US presidential election, recently picked Kamala Harris as his running mate – but her actual credentials to potentially become vice president (whose job description includes taking over as president, if need arises) aren’t convincing everyone. For one thing, some of her policies don’t align with what her party, declaratively at least, stands for.
And some of those who don’t like Harris have made their voices heard on the internet – like the author of this parody website kamalaharris.info, which highlights precisely those policy discrepancies.
Now Facebook, for its part, is censoring those voices. People attempting to share a link to the website on the biggest and most influential social media platform are getting this “error message”:
“You can’t post this. This URL goes against our community standards on spam,” says Facebook.
Standards on spam – of all things. Of course, that’s easier than saying, “we don’t want to get in any more trouble with the legacy media and shadow power centers that have been after us for four years, for all the wrong reasons – so please quit highlighting what’s wrong with Harris.”
If you take a look at the website, though, two things stand out: it’s obviously a parody account, and you don’t even have to scroll down to the footer: the big bold title says, “Kamala Harris for Arresting the People.” Clearly not her campaign’s effort.
And second, the site’s a collection of accurately-sourced information about what Harris stands for and who she is – not as a woman, but as a politician and an elected official. There is no controversy here, other than what Facebook is doing by blocking users from sharing these eye-openers.
These snippets documenting Harris’ track record are from stories published by the LA Times, the New York Times, YouTube videos, etc., and linked to the original source, even though the headlines seem to be the work of the site owner. Thus Harris is said to have “Kept Non-Violent Criminals in Jail to Put Out Forest Fires”; “Put Parents in Jail for Children Skipping School – And Laughed About It”; “Defended the Death Penalty”; “Supported Civil Asset Forfeiture To Seize Property Without Any Charges”; and no doubt the one that could come back to haunt her: “Kamala Harris Believes Accusers of Joe Biden.”
But clearly Facebook doesn’t respect the courage of its users wanting to share links to this information.
And none of this is new by the way – when Biden announced his bid, Facebook blocked all links to a parody website highlighting his antics; a site that still remains blocked to this day.
