Facebook Busted In Active Censorship of TNM

Facebook has been under fire for nearly two years for engaging in a policy of censorship that it says doesn’t exist. Over the weekend, the TNM busted Facebook in the act of disconnecting users from the TNM page when they disconnected the wrong person – the TNM’s Field Director, Don Teer.

Daniel Miller, President of the Texas Nationalist Movement, highlighted some of the ongoing issues with Facebook’s censorship of the TNM in an article on TNM.ME. In that article he discussed the activities that Facebook has employed against the TNM that stop short of removing the organization from their platform. All of these tactics amount to systematic harassment meant to force the TNM to voluntarily remove itself from the social network. One of these harassment tactics used by Facebook is the silent and unauthorized disconnection of users from the page who had previously liked and followed it. It was long-suspected that Facebook was engaging in this behavior toward the TNM but it was very difficult to prove – until now.

Facebook page admins have the ability to invite their friends to ‘like’ a page that they administer. This weekend, Teer’s name showed on the list of people who did not like the page and offered the opportunity to send him an invite. When Teer was asked about his ‘unlike’ he was surprised and livid.

“I was fighting mad when I found out that Facebook had removed my like from the TNM’s Facebook page without my permission,” Teer stated. “I have been an ardent supporter of the TNM for six years and liked their page as soon as I joined the organization. There is no way on God’s green earth that I would unlike the TNM’s Facebook page. This is just blatant censorship and it is unconscionable that any company would censor and try to keep folks from being engaged with the organization of their choice.”

Although this is not news to the TNM, it does reinforce the necessity for the organization to continue the process of seeking and creating alternatives to Facebook and for supporters to connect with the TNM in ways other than Facebook.