Presumed guilty in court of Facebook
Facebook exerts dangerous power over public discourse — and Exhibit A is the tech giant’s censorship of commentary on the Kyle Rittenhouse case, a media critic told The Post on Saturday.
Rittenhouse was acquitted on Friday of all charges stemming from his shooting of three men during riots in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020. Two of those men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, died of their injuries. Rittenhouse, 18, acted in self-defense, a jury ruled.
Although he was legally presumed innocent until proven otherwise, the court of Facebook was considerably less impartial.
“One of the big things that they did was manipulate the search engine so you couldn’t even find any references to Kyle Rittenhouse,” Dan Gainor, vice president of the Media Research Center, told The Post. “They’re out of touch with normal people.”
But it didn’t only restrict search results for Rittenhouse content, it also actively policed its users for pro-Rittenhouse posts. Public messages supporting the teen — some using the phrase “Free Kyle” — were removed. Even legal-analysis arguing the merits of his self-defense case disappeared.
“We’ve designated the shooting in Kenosha a mass murder and are removing posts in support of the shooter,” Facebook said at the time.
“We don’t allow symbols, praise or support of dangerous individuals or organizations on Facebook,” the company has said elsewhere of the case. “We define dangerous as things like: terrorist activity, organized hate or violence, mass or serial murder, human trafficking, criminal or harmful activity.”
Gainor said: “It’s dangerous that they have this much power over what can be discussed in a public forum. They could prevent free elections in every free country in the world if they wanted to.”
Even among some of the company’s left-leaning employees, the heavy hand didn’t sit well.
In internal discussions obtained by The Post, one Facebook employee accused colleagues of abusing the censorship power of their platform when it came to protests in Kenosha following the shooting.
“The rioting has been going on for over three months and it’s only an issue now because people inside the company saw violence they didn’t like,” the staffer said. “Employees are drunk on the absolute power of being in control of civics in America, without ever having to visit a voting booth (if voting is even an option).”
Facebook was far from alone in prejudging the case’s outcome.
The fundraising platform GoFundMe refused to allow Rittenhouse fans to raise money for his legal defense. It reversed the position after his acquittal.
The New York Times pulled punches, too. The Gray Lady refused to run an article documenting the devastation suffered by businesses in the Kenosha riots until after the 2020 presidential election, according to the story’s author, Nellie Bowles.
Bowles said she had gone to Kenosha to investigate the “mainstream liberal argument” that vandalizing buildings for racial justice was “good and healthy” and not detrimental because businesses had insurance.
“It turned out to be not true,” Bowles wrote.