Facebook Protects Chinese Propaganda Outlets While Cracking Down on Conservatives

AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

What do you get when you cross the largest social media platform in the world with the most powerful, Communist regime in existence? Apparently, you get a match made in Marxist heaven. A recent report shows that Facebook has become quite protective over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda reports on its site. Indeed, the social media giant appears to be treating the brutal regime far better than Americans who happen to be right-leaning.

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The Media Research Center recently published a report detailing how the CCP is allowed to operate unimpeded on Facebook, which routinely censors conservative content. The report notes:

Facebook has had no reservations about censoring conservative accounts. Yet, it allows accounts of state-controlled propaganda outlets from the genocidal regime of China to flourish. Forty accounts on Facebook, amassing over 751 million followers, are managed by Chinese state-controlled media outlets. For comparison, 751 million is over six times (6.39x) more followers than CNNFox NewsThe New York TimesABC NewsNBC NewsThe Washington Post and CBS News have combined (roughly 117,500,000) on Facebook.

Facebook has removed disinformation operations connected to Iranian state-controlled media and had targeted Russian state-controlled media, as well. However, the company has done very little to curb Chinese propaganda disseminated on the platform through its government-run media outlets.

The report further explains:

Thirty-seven of the 40 Facebook accounts identified by the Media Research Center as belonging to Chinese state-controlled media have corresponding accounts on Twitter. There they were labeled “state-affiliated” media. The MRC identified only 23 out of the 40 accounts that Facebook labeled state-affiliated accounts on its platform — a blatant violation of its policy on identifying accounts run by state-controlled media outlets.

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The author continues, pointing out several disturbing facts about the situation, noting that an investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute found that the CCP’s increase in influence was the result of manufactured misinformation, and that it “used its state-controlled media presence on Facebook to rationalize, justify and legitimize its human rights violations against various religious and political minorities.”

The report also details how the CCP uses Facebook to spread misinformation designed to defend its brutal practices and promote the Party’s narrative. Its treatment of the Uyghurs, the country’s Muslim minority, has been of particular concern. Nevertheless, Facebook has allowed the regime to use its platform to post deceptive content denying or obfuscating its practice of rounding up Muslims and imprisoning them in concentration camps.

“Chinese state-controlled media used Facebook to gaslight the world on its crimes against humanity, which include arbitrary imprisonment, mass surveilance, torture, forced sterilization, coerced abortions, forced labor and persecution of Uyghurs and members of other religious, ethnic and political minority groups,” the report explains.

Global Times, a CCP-controlled news outlet falsely claimed: “#China’s de-extremism measures have pulled many people back from the brink of terrorism.”

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The post on Facebook also accused the West of eliminating terrorists “without taking any effective measures to save them.” It also made the laughable claim that the Chinese regime does more to defend human rights than its critics. “Yes, What Xinjiang did to fight terrorism does not conform to Western values, but it worked,” the post argued.

Another China-controlled outlet attempted to portray its treatment of Uyghurs as a policy designed to help them. China Plus Culture published a post that told a story of “a young Uyghur woman” who supposedly “walked away from a life of violence and extremism thanks to one of China’s vocational education and training centers.”

The report lists several other examples of Chinese propaganda being shared on Facebook and noted that it used the platform to justify its occupation of Hong Kong and those protesting their treatment at the hands of the regime.

To put it simply, Facebook appears to be uninterested in the fact that a brutal, Communist regime is using its service to propagates false narratives to counter criticism of its brazen attack on human rights. The company’s leadership does not seem concerned with preventing the CCP from covering up its apparent crimes against humanity. Even the organization’s employees have spoken out about this matter, but to no avail.

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Yet, the company saw fit to banish former President Donald Trump from its site under the guise of trying to stop incitements to violence. It has taken a decidedly aggressive approach to hampering the distribution of right-leaning content. Facebook’s leadership seems to believe that these people are more of a threat than a government that imprisons, tortures, and murders its citizens. If only we had a Fourth Estate willing to highlight the company’s blatant pandering to an oppressive government.

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