Press Release

10/4/2021

Ryan Hartwig’s Statement on Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

Yesterday, October 3rd, another Facebook whistleblower went public claiming Facebook didn’t do enough to promote the public interest. In an exclusive interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, discussed Facebook’s mistakes and blamed them for their inaction in preventing the January 6th mass protest in Washington D.C.

Sixteen months ago, in June 2020, I too went public as a whistleblower against Facebook. And since then I wrote a 300+ page book detailing the countless examples of their bias and gross misconduct.

It may surprise you to hear this, but Facebook did take some positive actions in allowing freedom of speech, but for every example like that there another 10 examples of them limiting constitutional liberties.

For example, at one point the phrase “Keep Canadians out of the United States” was a violation of the hate speech policy for exclusion. However, Facebook modified this stance and made it more nuanced. Since this is political speech discussing immigration, they decided to allow this phrase.

Another example is how they treat historical events. For example, the phrase “Muslims did 9/11” was once a violation of the hate speech policy, but Facebook made it more nuanced and allowed this phrase because it is describing a historical event, and the phrase is factually accurate. Other phrases like “Muslims are terrorists” are still deleted for hate speech.

Despite these positive steps from Facebook, I documented over 30 examples of Facebook flagging far-right extremist groups, making newsworthy exceptions to protect public figures from the hate speech policy, allow greater attacks against the police, and allowing hate speech against specific, races, genders and sexual orientations. Facebook specifically made exceptions to allow child nudity and human smuggling, while targeting Trump supporters through their bullying policy. All these examples and more are in my book Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship with Kent Heckenlively, JD, which published on August 17, 2021.

Ms. Haugen’s main takeaway is that Facebook chose to optimize its own interest and profits over what was good for the public.

My issue with this argument is that Facebook is still a private company, despite them acting like a government agency and the Biden White House flagging content to be reviewed by Facebook.

Private companies don’t need to do what’s good for the public, they are beholden to their shareholders. With that being said, Facebook is abusing the authority delegated to them by Congress, which allows them to restrict access to material that is obscene, lewd, lascivious, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, in good faith.

Ms. Haugen’s argument is that Facebook isn’t doing enough to combat misinformation. In reality, Facebook doesn’t have the legal grounds to combat misinformation, and that was never the purpose of section 230. My argument is that Facebook is overstepping their bounds and censoring too much content.

If we were to follow Frances Haugen’s logic, then any group that organizes on Facebook shouldn’t be allowed, because any mass protest could lead to violence, including Occupy Wall Street, Antifa or BLM. If applied uniformly, Facebook would then prevent any kind of coordination of in-person events.

I attended Trump’s speech in-person on January 6th, 2021. I was about 50 yards back, sitting down while listening to him speak. I did not make it to the Capitol later that afternoon. I personally didn’t use Facebook to organize my trip, and I know many people didn’t use Facebook to organize.

If Facebook is responsible for the January 6th mass protests, then we may as well delete the internet, because Americans use the internet to organize peaceful protests, and they also use the internet to organize BLM riots, and Antifa uses the internet to coordinate attacks against federal buildings.

In fact, on November 3rd, 2017, Facebook specifically excluded Antifa as a hate org, thus allowing them the ability to openly organize violent events. So if anything, Facebook is responsible for the violence ensuing from Antifa protests. The following is from page 149 of my book:

Facebook did plenty to target right wing political groups and label them as terrorist groups leading up to the 2020 election. They did this not only in the U.S. but globally. This is on page 96 of my book, Behind the Mask of Facebook.

Cynthia Tomlinson*

November 3, 2017

#HighPri #Nov4Protest

On Saturday Nov. 4th, there will be a planned nationwide protest titled

“The Trump/Pence Regime Must GO”, against President Trump and Vice

President Pence. This protest is occurring in at least 9 cities. This protest is

expected to span a couple of days (similar to the Occupy Wall Street protest).

There have been unconfirmed links between this protest and Antifa. There

will potentially be counter protesters and it might become violent. The protest

Facebook’s Treatment of Antifa, Police Officers, and Drug Cartels 149

will take place in the following cities: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Los

Angeles, New York, Omaha, San Francisco and Seattle.

Important Call-Outs:

Antifa is not considered a hate org.

Look out for the following violations: coordinating harm and hate speech.

Share trends and pose questions in the comments below.

Read More: https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-rallies-november-4-promise[1]remove-trump-white-house-700406

[liked] You and 494 others Seen by 964

Facebook did plenty to target right wing political groups and label them as terrorist groups leading up to the 2020 election. They did this not only in the U.S. but globally. This is on page 96 of my book, Behind the Mask of Facebook.

“Shawn Browder posted Regional Far-Right Extremism to Cognizant:

North America Team

September 12, 2018

[Market Insights Request] + Regional Far-right Extremism

Type: [Far-right Extremism + Terrorism]

Overview: Facebook is beginning to investigate the presence of far-right

extremist and extremist terrorist groups (outside of the US) on

Facebook and Instagram, and need to understand what content reviewers

for the North America market are seeing at the ground level.

In order to mitigate risk for Facebook, we are collecting job IDs that

highlight trending content related to regional extremist groups and

individuals, and job IDs for content that highlight gaps in the policies

and guidelines surrounding these individuals and orgs.

96 Behind the Mask of Facebook

Please collect and surface examples on an ongoing basis and send to both

Suzannah

Fischer and myself.

[reaction] You and 464 others”

In conclusion, censorship will never be enough for the left. They continue to promulgate the lie that Facebook isn’t censoring political content enough. For now, the censorship is happening predominantly toward the right wing, but the tables could be turned. I’m an advocate for freedom of speech on the internet, and that means protecting speech for people on the left as well. So even if I do disagree with your speech, I won’t attempt to label it as “misinformation” or as a “conspiracy theory”. There is no such thing is “hate speech”, this is simply a fabrication from the left in order to undermine their political opponents and suppress political dissidence.

While Ms. Haugen enjoys the limelight and continues to advocate for free speech tyranny, I’ll continue speaking out for our internet freedoms that protect all Americans, both on the left and the right.

Ryan Hartwig

Censorship Expert and Facebook Whistleblower

ryanhartwig@protonmail.com