Following revelations of censorship by Facebook against the pro-Trump duo, Diamond and Silk, a team member at Milo Yiannopoulos’ Dangerous.com has indicated that the right-wing firebrand’s content is being similarly restricted by the social media giant.
“Zuckerberg’s appearance in Washington and the Diamond and Silk controversy clearly got a lot of people thinking about Milo, as our page was bombarded that week with fans telling us they had not [seen] a post from Milo in months,” Milo colleague Chadwick Moore told Red Alert Politics.
According to Diamond & Silk, Facebook dubbed the pair “unsafe to the community” and heavily restricted their content. While a Facebook representative originally told Fox News this was a direct result of concerns over the pair’s “online rhetoric,” a Facebook spokesperson quickly backtracked, dubbing the handling of the incident “inaccurate.”
Since news of the censorship debacle broke, fans have bombarded the Milo Yiannopoulos Facebook page with comments claiming a significant reduction of Yiannopoulos’ content in their Facebook newsfeed. Some fans are claiming they don’t see Yiannopoulos’ content at all unless they visit the page directly.
“Many said they didn’t even realize we still had a Facebook page,” Moore explained.
“These fans went out of their way to search for us, realized they were still following us, that we were still very much around and posting heavily, but they were seeing zero content when they logged into Facebook.”
“Our Facebook reach has always been consistent, in the tens of millions. The first week of February, that number was cut exactly in half, almost overnight,” Moore said of the Yiannopoulos page’s traffic, pinning the blame on Facebook’s January algorithm update titled, “Bringing People Closer Together.”
A Facebook blog post explained that the update’s purpose is to “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people,” but stipulated that “Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease.”
“The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution,” the blog post continues.
“Social media companies are playing a very dangerous game. Had Facebook been around in the time of Charles Darwin, his page most certainly would have been suppressed, because his ideas were controversial,” Moore concluded, alluding to Yiannopoulos’ often polarizing political content that has provoked strong reactions from supporters and detractors alike.
Recently, a crowd largely comprised of members of the Democratic Socialists of America at the Churchill Tavern in New York yelled, “Nazi scum, get out!” at both Yiannopoulos and Moore until they left the building.
Yiannopoulos later posted a photo on Instagram describing the incident, writing, “My first thought was John and not getting myself hurt or killed. I don’t know how I’d explain to my black husband that I got hurt for being a ‘white supremacist.’”
“It’s now impossible for me to safely go out for lunch in most major cities in America because I supported Trump at the last election and don’t like feminism,” Yiannopoulos concluded.
