Facebook protest calls for 'blackout' of site over treatment of conservatives

A Facebook event set for August 25th asks users to suspend their accounts for at least 24 hours in protest of what it calls arbitrary and capricious policies targeting conservatives, event organizer John Vigil told
Examiner Friday.

The event, called "Facebook Blackout," also asks businesses to suspend their advertising for the entire day.

When asked what inspired him to do this, Vigil said he was tired of being punished for conservative posts while "Kill Zimmerman" pages were allowed to stay active.

Vigil also said his fiancé was put into "Facebook jail" for using the word "muzzie," referring to Muslims.

"There is no doubt that Facebook has a very liberal bias in terms of meting out discipline," he said.

As of this writing, the event has over 2,500 people who say they intend to suspend their accounts for the full 24-hour period. A similar event on July 4 attracted over 2,400 attendees. That event, called "Freedom from Facebook Day," only asked users to log off the site for 24 hours.

One person at the event said she was banned from Facebook for a day because a liberal didn't like what she said -- a very common complaint.

Another person said he was banned for anti-Islam posts while others complained of being punished for using the "friends" feature.

Yet another said she was blocked for 12 hours for writing "shame on you" in response to a post saying George Zimmerman should have drowned when he was helped family members involved in a wreck.

Complaints like these are nothing new.

In March, conservative blogger Diane Sori was banned from Facebook for a post she never made. Worse yet, she had no Internet access at the time she was banned.

The same month, we reported that a Texas man was punished for comparing a friend to a liberal.

The site has been somewhat schizophrenic over posts involving violence, allowing grisly beheading videos in some cases while punishing others who post links that lead to images of beheadings.

Recently, Facebook took down the very popular "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" page, claiming it contained hate speech and nudity, but we were unable to find anything in that category on the page.

Other pro-veteran pages like "Grunts11Bravo" were also targeted by Facebook.

Administrators we spoke to believe they were targeted by "trolls," people who "like" a page in order to file false reports of hate speech or nudity. Some told us they believe the attacks were coordinated by liberal pages intent on shutting down dissenting opinion.

Recently, Fox News' Todd Starnes was banned by Facebook for a short period over a politically incorrect post referencing Paula Deen and the NRA.

The social media giant recently apologized after it blocked a link to Kirk Cameron's new movie, "Unstoppable."

The event can be seen here.

http://www.examiner.com/article/facebook-protest-calls-for-blackout-of-site-over-treatment-of-conservatives