Allegations that Facebook treated COVID19 vaccine promotions as political adverting
Facebook has been been accused of blocking messages from city authorities, health care providers and community officials promoting vaccination against COVID-19.
This again has called into question how effective the platform is in helping public awareness campaigns.
Is COVID19 vaccination a political issue?
Groups and institutions in the United States who were promoting vaccination, were asked to register their adverts as political messages. Since then, though, Facebook has acknowledged the mistake and restored the posts from a few of those organisations.
The truth is that Facebook got caught in yet another censorship controversy. This time it banned adverts which called for people to go and get vaccinated. The social media giant was classifying COVID19 vaccination promotions as “political advertising” which meant that urgent information about the vaccine did not reach the people it was meant to.
Whilst Facebook claims this was an algorithm glitch, and whilst there isn’t an apparent reason to doubt this claim, one cannot be blamed for remining suspicious.
Since Facebook has become a de facto political player, every censorship move it makes, is viewed as political.
Promoting chaos as a political tool
There are political ideologies that thrive on chaos. What if one day (or perhaps already) Facebook decides to adopt one of those ideologies and start using its power and influence to promote and spread chaos in some countries or around the world.
Why spread chaos? Because people in a state of despair, are often willing to give away control in order to be saved. This is why revolutionaries thrive on chaos. Stalin was often quoted as saying that chaos is good for the revolution because the worst it gets for the people, the better it gets for the Party.
During the 12 months prior to the 2020 US presidential election, the business community around the world watched with dismay the chaos on America streets as thousands of small businesses were burnt down to the ground, looted and destroyed. Back then, Facebook helped promote the chaos by facilitating communications between rioters and by promoting news stories about the carefully organised state of lawlessness in some cities.
Does Facebook actually view itself as a leader of some sort of a social revolution?