Time to leave Facebook?

Whistleblowers from the Justice Department are alleging that Facebook spied on the private messages of users who expressed anti-authority or anti-government sentiments or questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, according to the New York Post. 

Reports say that Facebook employees would flag these users and send their private messages, redacted, to the FBI. The FBI would use these "leads" to obtain subpoenas from the US Attorney’s office and “force” Facebook to relinquish the whole, unredacted messages. The FBI would then investigate these private citizens, sometimes using covert surveillance tactics and technology. 

“As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it,” one whistleblower told the Post. 

Erica Sackin, who previously worked for Planned Parenthood and Obama’s campaign, now leads Facebook’s communications on “counterterrorism and dangerous organizations and individuals.” She denies the allegations. 

“These claims are just wrong,” she said. “The suggestion we seek out peoples’ private messages for anti-government language or questions about the validity of past elections and then proactively supply those to the FBI is plainly inaccurate and there is zero evidence to support it.” 

However, Facebook is known for its cozy relationship with the U.S. government, particularly Biden’s allies. Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed to podcast host Joe Rogan that Facebook had censored the damning New York Post story about the Bidens during the 2020 election at the urging of the FBI. 

This month, America’s Frontline News reported on a “censorship enterprise” in which the Biden White House and tech oligarchs collude to suppress unapproved speech. Internal emails show that Facebook has been particularly dutiful in enforcing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 messaging, even removing a satirical “Dr. Fauci” account at the White House’s behest. 

As recently as this weekend, the BBC bragged that due to its complaints to Meta, Facebook removed a large group in which users shared stories of COVID-19 vaccine victims and vaccine-induced injuries. Users managed to evade censorship by using emojis as code to escape Facebook’s algorithm, where a carrot emoji represented the vaccine. Facebook deleted the 250,000 member group after the corporate media outlet complained that people were posting about vaccine injuries. 

“The groups are being used to share unverified claims of people being either injured or killed by vaccines. Once the BBC alerted Facebook's parent company, Meta, the groups were removed,” the outlet trumpeted proudly.