The Real Scandal Behind the Facebook 'Whistleblower' Saga

Frances Haugen is a Trojan horse.

The new media darling "blew the whistle" on Facebook’s alleged misdeeds, and now she’s setting the table for even further censorship of conservative viewpoints.

This new campaign is just the latest in a longstanding effort to marginalize ideas that don’t conform to leftist ideology.

Convention of States Action Facebook ads have been restricted as "political" while those from similar left-leaning nonprofits have been allowed to stand.

Amazon kicked Parler off the internet by scapegoating the conservative social media competitor as responsible for the January 6 riots.

In September, Michigan Republican gubernatorial hopeful Garrett Soldano was unceremoniously banned from YouTube for supposedly spreading "misinformation" about COVID-19.

That Big Tech and their allies in the Democratic Party would launch a coordinated attack against alternative media doesn’t surprise me. But the brazenness of this latest assault is shocking.

With the help of former Obama aide Bill Burton’s public relations firm, Bryson Gillette, Haugen began her attack by leaking internal Facebook documents to The Wall Street Journal. These documents revealed, among other things, that the social media giant knew the damage its platforms were inflicting on young women but did nothing to mitigate that damage.

This is, of course, nothing new. We’ve known for years that social media harms young people, and most Americans weren’t surprised to learn of these new "revelations."

But in her CBS "60 Minutes" interview and her testimony before Congress, Haugen used those obvious truths as a Trojan Horse to advance her real agenda.

For example, in her "60 Minutes" interview, she blamed Facebook’s supposed lack of oversight for the January 6  "insurrection."

Haugen argued that Facebook turned off alleged safety measures after the election to increase profit and only turned them back on after January 6.

"Like, they basically said, 'Oh good, we made it through the election. There weren’t any riots. We can get rid of Civic Integrity now," she said.

"Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection. And when they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, 'I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,'"she added.

That's ridiculous.

Even the FBI has said the events of January 6 were not "organized," let alone organized on Facebook.

Also, what about Parler? Wasn’t Parler, not Facebook, supposedly to blame for January 6?

No one has ever accused the left of being consistent.

Haugen also conflates actual illegal activity with the Democrats’ favorite term, "misinformation."

"When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other, the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world," she told 60 Minutes.

Did you catch that? She began by discussing "polarizing content," which could include any mainstream conservative viewpoint, and linked it to "ethnic violence."

60 Minutes dutifully followed that comment with a reference to Myanmar, where the military allegedly "used Facebook" to launch a genocide.

Three seconds later, Haugen returns to "misinformation" by talking about a friend who was "lost" to "online conspiracy theories."

It’s easy to miss, but once you see it, you start to notice this sleight of hand throughout Haugen’s statements. "Misinformation," which includes the kind of content published by many reputable conservative organizations, leads directly to illegal activities like genocide.

What’s the end goal? Facebook let the cat out of the bag in their response to Haugen’s comments.

"It’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet," said Facebook’s Director of Policy Communications, Lena Pietsch.

"It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act."

Facebook and other Big Tech giants would like nothing more than for Congress to crack down on conservative content. That aligns with their political priors, but it also lets them off the hook.

If they’re not responsible for setting their own policies, Congress can’t blame them for the results of those policies.

If Congress gets its hands on Big Tech, we know exactly what’s going to happen. Last year, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a plan that would levy civil and criminal penalties against social media companies that "knowingly disseminate" misinformation.

Under the threat of criminal penalties, social media companies will totally restrict any content that doesn’t align with a leftist Congress.

Once that happens, alternative media sources will go bankrupt, and the Democrats’ Trojan Horse scheme will have come to fruition.