By Samuel Itsede
Popular social media platform Facebook has been accused by media practitioners for been biased towards contents that doesn’t promote American and President Donald Trump’s while at the same time suppressing Blacks and African interests.
Speaking on the issue a network administrator of a popular online news network in Nigeria, Bright Obayi decried Facebook Algorithm biased and skewed to project white America and Donald Trump.
“It has become obvious that Facebook algorithms are skewed to promote and project white America interests. I have no doubt also in my mind that Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook is a Trump supporter and is using his platform to silence opposition voices and promote that of the republican and Donald Trump”
He noted that as a website administrator he had on several occasions boosted posts on Facebook which didn’t get the expected traction. “what I have discovered especially in recent times is that once a post does not support white America or is against the person of Donald Trump, the post would be downgraded by Facebook algorithm. For instance I boosted a post recently in which I expected to reach at least 1.5 million people based on Facebook’s own estimates, within the first week, but three weeks later we are yet to even reach a million mark. This has happened to several of our post. The post in question has to do with the Congolese lawyers suit against President Trump and the US government where they are demanding compensation over the outbreak of the coronavirus. Facebook book deliberately refused to give the post traction”.
Obayi said that the deliberate downgrading of the post irrespective of the fact that huge sums of money was paid to boost the post amounts to suppression of freedom of expression. “Facebook is suppressing freedom of expression and has rigged its algorithm in support of American and Trump’s white puremacists values”
He also noted that Facebook blocks his acoount all the time. “They block me all the time especially when I express anti Trump sentiments, but allows others to publish what they want, including fake news.
Trump will promote violence and share false claims to millions of followers, and they will not see anything wrong. He’s defending Trump and other white people who are promoting things against blacks, including voters suppression ”
Also speaking on the subject, Simon Ateba, the publisher of Today’s news Africa, took a swipe at owner of Facebook, Mike Zuckerberg for being a racist and using his platform to support Trump. He advised Africans to be careful of their activities on facebook declaring that Facebook was collecting a trove of information about them without their knowledge.
He said that during the George Floyd protest
Facebook blocked his account on more than one occasion because he condemned the brutal killing of the unarmed Black man by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for over 9 minutes until he died.
“my account was suspended for 24 hours after I condemned the lynching of George Floyd, another black man deliberately murdered by a white policeman with his hands in his pocket. May God forgive those who assassinate black people and those who use their social media platforms to silence other black people like myself. black people are being massacred by white cops and the courts always find them not guilty. May God help black people around the world” Simon said.
He also said that recently Blacks in the United States sued Facebook, because according to him Zuckerberg, “is backing hate speech, promoting white nationalism and downgrading information platforms that are owned by blacks”.
He accused Zuckerberg of coming up with only algorithm that promote the dominance of the whites. “To them, the only media companies that should survive are American and Western news publications” .
He also advised African nations to pay attention to how Facebook was violating their privacy without their knowledge by the number of data they are collecting on them.
” When I downloaded a copy of my Facebook data last week, I didn’t expect to see much. My profile is sparse, I rarely post anything on the site, and I seldom click on ads. (I’m what some call a Facebook “lurker.”). But when I opened my file, it was like opening Pandora’s box. With a few clicks, I learned that about 500 advertisers — many that I had never heard of, like Bad Dad, a motorcycle parts store, and Space Jesus, an electronica band — had my contact information, which could include my email address, phone number and full name. Facebook also had my entire phone book, including the number to ring my apartment buzzer. The social network had even kept a permanent record of the roughly 100 people I had deleted from my friends list over the last 14 years, including my exes”.
He noted that he was really scared because Facebook had collected so much information about him which he is not even aware of. “it would seem as if Facebook know me more than I know myself which is quite ironic but this is the truth and it’s is scary” he said.
