Facebook steps up campaign of censorship and monitoring
Social media giant Facebook has moved rapidly to implement greater censorship protocols this past month.
On January 31, CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a notice outlining extraordinary plans to monitor all the postings and messages of its users, censor independent journalism, and use artificial intelligence (AI) to report users to the police and intelligence agencies.
On January 12, Facebook said it would deprioritize news and political content—that is, display them less often—in favor of “personal moments.” One week later, Zuckerberg announced that of the news articles that are shown to users, the News Feed will prioritize those published by what it called “trustworthy” sources, meaning pro-establishment outlets such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Then, on January 29, the company reported that it will prioritize news from “local sources.”
The avalanche of new measures for mass political censorship and surveillance, now being released on a weekly and even daily basis, testifies to the correctness and urgency of the World Socialist Web Site's open letter to socialist, left-wing and anti-war organizations, individuals and web sites, “For an International Coalition against Internet Censorship.” We urge our readers to read and widely share the letter and to take up this fight.
