On October 27, 2016, only 12 days before the general election, our 100 Percent Fed Up Facebook page with almost 1 million followers and tens of millions of engagements each week, was shut down, without any notice.
The night that our Facebook page was shut down, we posted an article about George Soros. In the article, we wrote about how the far-left billionaire, George Soros claimed Trump would win the popular vote in a landslide, but Hillary’s win was guaranteed, or a “done deal.” The video was removed from YouTube that evening, at the same time our Facebook page was shut down.
Our Facebook page was reinstated after Breitbart News wrote an article that exposed Facebook’s outrageous action. We were never given a reason for the shut down, a person working for Facebook, who had been assigned to deal with major conservative pages like ours, simply told us in an email, “This was a mistake” and that “The page is back up.”
Our Facebook page was started over nine years ago. We have never made our political leanings a secret. We’re two conservative moms whose lives were forever changed after meeting Andrew Breitbart. One week after we met the game-changing liberal turned conservative firebrand, he died. Only days after Andrew Breitbart’s death, we decided to commit ourselves to bringing the truth to Americans that the mainstream media and cable news sources like CNN and MSBC refuse to report.
Our Facebook page resonated with every day Americans, our traffic on Facebook was off the charts. Depending on the week, our page was receiving tens of millions of hits. We had weeks where our page was seeing between 30-36 million engagements in a one-week period.
In one 12 month period after President Trump won the election, we lost over 90% of our Facebook traffic. Our 100percentfedup.com website, whose traffic was mostly driven by Facebook users, went from 9.3 million hits in the month of February 2017 to 1.7 million hits in February 2018.
Two days after President Trump’s inauguration, we had over 25 million organic (non-paid) visits to our Facebook page. Ever since that day, our traffic has fallen off by over 90% and has never recovered.
In June, traveled to Washington D.C. with The Gateway Pundit owner, Jim Hoft, to meet with a number of prominent members of Congress, who all agreed that social media censorship of conservatives is a serious issue.
Some of the top conservative voices like Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer have recently been elmintated from social media. While every day Americans may not know them or care that they were removed from Facebook, it won’t be long before the only voices allowed on giant social media platforms, are those who either go along with a leftist ideology, or those who keep their mouths shut about their conservative views. We don’t plan to chose either of those options. We are currently planning another trip back to D.C., where we will talk to a number of top legislators and people who have the ability to help us stop the censorship of conservatives leading up to the 2020 election. The Republican Party needs to take this threat seriously. If we don’t stop the silencing of voices who support President Trump, and other Republican members of Congress and to speak out against people who endanger our freedoms, the far- left, anti-Trump media and radical liberal personalities and lawmakers will be the only voices the world hears on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.
We’re not alone in our desire to have something done about the censorship of voices on social media. Today, an op-ed by Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes appeared in the New York Times. In his op-ed, Hughes begins by painting a picture of his relationship with Mark Zuckerberg, as freindly. He mentions that he met Zuckerberg at his Facebook office and then traveled to his home, where they interacted with his daughter, but admits they “talked politics mostly.” Hughes never mentions the leanings of Mark Zuckerberg, but it’s interesting he admits that they mostly talked about politcs. It’s a strange admission, that after reuniting with the Facebook co-founder who takes great lengths to make everyone believe he has no interest affecting the outcome of elections with his social media platform, that they would spend most of their time discussing politics.
Here is a portion of Chris Hughe’s op-ed in the New York Times, where he calls for the break up of Facebook.
Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government. He controls three core communications platforms — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — that billions of people use every day. Facebook’s board works more like an advisory committee than an overseer, because Mark controls around 60 percent of voting shares. Mark alone can decide how to configure Facebook’s algorithms to determine what people see in their News Feeds, what privacy settings they can use and even which messages get delivered. He sets the rules for how to distinguish violent and incendiary speech from the merely offensive, and he can choose to shut down a competitor by acquiring, blocking or copying it.
Watch:
Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks. I’m disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders. And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.
The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook’s explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure that Americans are protected and markets are competitive. Any day now, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to impose a $5 billion fine on the company, but that is not enough; nor is Facebook’s offer to appoint some kind of privacy czar. After Mark’s congressional testimony last year, there should have been calls for him to truly reckon with his mistakes. Instead the legislators who questioned him were derided as too old and out of touch to understand how tech works. That’s the impression Mark wanted Americans to have, because it means little will change.
We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American.
It is time to break up Facebook.
