By Martin Fisher, PRB News
Christian Action Network Correspondent
Christians and conservatives all over social media are being marginalized and suppressed in their speech and expression while liberals enjoy openly offered help, promotion and encouragement for their views.
Nowhere is this more obvious than on Facebook.
We see it. The Christian Action Network observes how Facebook's recent treatment of our “boosted” postings have been purposely degraded to limit their impact.
The “boosting” feature is a product we pay for. It used to be effective and worthwhile. Now, we don't make such purchases because the results are rigged to fail.
Aside from being a ridiculous business model of contempt for conservative customers, it speaks volumes to what the values of Facebook really are:
They don't like Bible-believing, (in other words, real) Christians. And a quick look at some of our recent new friends on Facebook supports this conclusion.
Sharing from a Biblical perspective is specifically targeted
We reached out to two other groups to see how Facebook was treating them.
One group is actually a business, W.W. Bridal Boutique. The bridal shop has been suffering from homosexual threats for nearly four years because of their policy to refuse service to same-sex marriages. Another is called Christian Warriors, whose president has been battling an Islamic indoctrination class his daughter has been forced to attend in a West Virginia public school.
Lisa Boucher of W.W. Bridal Boutique in Pennsylvania said her Facebook "views" and "reach" numbers for their posted happenings in recent weeks has fallen from more than a thousand as typical to less than 200.
“I have noticed that the number of people we can reach is being curtailed,” Lisa said. “I think we are being censored.”
While Lisa has not experienced being temporarily banned from Facebook (or in the jargon of social media, placed in Facebook jailed), “We have noticed that we can't even chose the option of boosting our posts,” she said.
“Recently, for everything I might have wanted to boost, but couldn't pay for it anyway, they're not allowing it. They all say 'boosting unavailable.'”
Worse treatment than that has been how Facebook has been shutting down father and minister Rich Penkoski, who is also president of Christian Warriors. He has reached a point of great frustration with Facebook.
“They just don't want our views expressed,” he said. “If you need help, there is rarely a human being to talk to. When you finally do break through to someone, they lie. They lie so much.”
Penkoski has gotten through to some contact persons with the help of the Amarican Family Association that also notices the mistreatment.
Penkoski's videos on pro-family and education issues that confront Islamic indoctrination in our schools vanish immediately on Facebook he says, and AFA observers verified the matter.
“I am sick of this, tired of it – it is done just because of sharing Biblical ideas,” Penkoski said.
He was, in fact, scheduled for another conversation with Facebook representatives as this report was being prepared for publication.
“We will be talking with Neil Potts and Sara Pollack of Facebook,” Penkoski said.
We wish him well, but what can we do?
Christian Action Network President Martin Mawyer said that social media is a vital communications link for our society and even globally, and the organized left wants to rule over it like they do the mass media.
“This is an important battle that we must fight and win,” Mawyer said. “Facebook is not just fun and games, it is a major arm of media interaction now.”
According to Mawyer, Penkoski has put forth a great effort on his part, but there must be an uprising.
“We can't just watch one Warrior for Christ out there to see what happens,” Mawyer said. “We have got to get in this so we are noticed – so we can't be ignored.”
Mawyer said the way to combat Facebook's suppression of conservative ideas is through a campaign of, "Like, comment and share."
"Few Facebook users understand how FB distributes stories into a person's news feed," Mawyer said. "But if people understood this, users could defeat Facebook's suppression of conservative ideas."
"It is an absolutely a fact that Facebook will immediately suppress a posting from a conservative organization," Mawyer said. Christian Action Network has over 30,000 fans, but its postings will oftentimes only reach a meager 400 of those fans, that's less than 2 percent of the total fan base.
"That's called suppression," Mawyer said.
"But the more people do three things -- like, comment and share a posting -- that reach will increase to nearly 10,000 people."
"In other words," Mawyer said, "Facebook will initially attempt to stop the distribution of a conservative posting when it is placed. But what happens to it after that is basically in the control of Facebook users. The more people "like" an article, share that article or comment on that article, the greater distribution that article will receive."
"If you want to fight back," Mawyer said. "The solution is at your fingertips: Like. Comment. And Share."