Yesterday, there was a huge froth over how FB was “deleting” historian Heather Cox Richardson’s posts – a statement that was demonstrably untrue (As Richardson reported, posts were “disappearing” – not showing up when you went to her Facebook page; they remained available through search and links). I must have seen 20 copies of Fear and Loathing: Closer to the Edge’s misleading and misinfo-filled post on Facebook alone. Today, Richardson’s feed is fine again.
Richardson was very sensible and straightforward: I’m experiencing an issue, and if you’re looking for my stuff here are the other places you can find it. The response was over-the-top, with misinformation spreading through news outlets and individuals across the web. In many cases, that was unintentional – people read that HCR’s posts were being deleted, and shared the info.
In some cases, like the Fear and Loathing post, the misinfo can only have been deliberate – a point we’ll revisit later.
What Most Likely Happened
It wasn’t HCR. It was a collection of similarly-aligned public figures and truth-speakers including HCR, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Jay Kuo – and, prior to this, Andy Borowitz, Philip Low and others.
What seems most likely is that Facebook intended to shadow-ban these speakers (reduce the visibility of their posts) and someone screwed it up in a way that also broke the feed on their FB pages, making the effort immediately visible. It probably encompasses a lot more folks, who maybe don’t post as often so didn’t notice as immediately.
This is not something new. If you’re wigging out about it, then it’s an opportunity to learn about social media. This happens all the time because *this is not your space*. It belongs to a billionaire who can do what he pleases with it. the problem here isn’t “who they’re doing it to today” but rather “that you didn’t know this was happening all along”. Now you know. It will happen again, and they’ll do a more competent job of it.
This time, the responses I saw included:
- Widely spreading the misleading post.
- Much howling about Heather with zero examination of whether anyone else was affected.
- People rushing to makes “backups” and “save copies” of posts they could see – a massive waste of time when one considers that HCR’s Facebook posts are copies of original material posted on her Substack, and she writes them on her computer. Even if this professional writer is not keeping an archive of her owned intellectual properly, this information exists in multiple places.
“Leaving Facebook”
Looking to leave Facebook? Here’s what to know.
What I didn’t see:
- People pausing to assess what was actually occurring.
- People looking to see whether the same symptoms affected anyone else.
- People making an effort to understand how the observed facts fit together.
There was a fair amount of conspiracy theory escalation in that convo, too. Yes, it’s probably true that Facebook made an effort to silence voices it doesn’t like. That’s important. OMGThey’reDeletingHCRFromTheInternet, however, is not only unproductive – it’s problematic.
Why That Response Matters
It’s reasonable to say that most of HCR’s followers are not Trump supporters. In fact, a lot of them are people who wonder how the heck Trump supporters ever became convinced he was someone worth following. The answer: the same way folks got on yesterday’s OMGHeather bandwagon. And they didn’t recognize it when it happened to them, either. F&L’s post, for example, followed the same format as all those pretend-American pages run by the troll farms back in 2015-16:
- A real, actual fact is selected
- Misinterpretations and exaggerations were added. Mostly nothing blatant – things you can disclaim as simple misunderstanding or an unfortunate word choice.
- Flat-out lies are added, like the one in the image above.
In this case – F&L is an anti-Trump feed. Maybe their post was hyperbole – just terrible journalism – or they were leveraging Cox’s broad popularity to boost their own signal, or they read a bunch of stuff into a simple statement and were intentionally working to create outrage over what they thought was happening. But as a tactic – this kind of slow-shift from factual to fantastical is exactly how thousands of troll-farmed pages influenced the course of the American political discussion.
Obviously, that’s not going to turn HCR followers into Trump supporters. But now that the folks who have been won over have been won – all those resources are free to divert, distract, and confuse the folks who might be willing to oppose the rapid slide into authoritarianism.
Hundreds of thousands of people were focused on “the HCR issue” yesterday. So far I have found two people that mentioned Kamala Harris, with zero news articles. Who else did people miss while they were focused on one symptom rather than the actual problem?
Things To Do Instead
First and foremost: try not to get distracted by and contribute to every social media storm that brews. Critical thinking and source assessment has never been more important in the USA. It doesn’t take much beyond a focused skim to recognize how much the F&L post’s claims-of-what-Heather-said differ from her actual words. Don’t risk complacently believing that those tactics are only being used on the Other Guys, or that you’re Too Smart To Fall For That Stuff the Way Those Other Idiots Did. These proven tactics work on humans who agree with you just as well as the ones who don’t.
Second, focus on the real problem: if you’re getting your news from Social Media, recognize that it’s being manipulated.
This isn’t new. If you’re over-the-top about yesterday’s incident – then you’ve just finally noticed it’s happening. It’s not about one person – it’s about you forgetting the number one rule of the internet: if you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product. Facebook is not “your” space. It belongs to a billionaire who opposes most of what HCR and others stand for. He can and will use his platform to serve his interests.
The response to “I don’t think I can rely on Facebook to feed me HCR’s posts” is to subscribe to her original posts on her web site, presently maintained on substack. The response to “I realize I can’t rely on Facebook to give me real news” is to start going to the source. If you value someone’s content – find out where their site is. Follow them on multiple social media platforms so that if one limits their content you’ll get it in your feed on another – and notice the difference.
Recognize what’s already true: these sites have never been a reliable source. Instead of complacently rolling along on the theory that “they may have some problems but I will get what I need”, assume you won’t and make a better plan. if you don’t trust Zuck, you clever kitty, then don’t trust his stinking platform to be your primary source of anything.
When someone points out that the billionaires are doing what they always do: instead of running in circles shouting about today’s symptom – get focused on the problem.
