“I don’t understand why we don’t just massacre all the right-wingers and thus settle the whole thing peacefully,” is an example of a hateful post that appeared on Facebook recently. Despite the fact that it constitutes a death threat, Facebook does not find it problematic. It seems that Facebook, as well as other social networks such as Instagram, find it much more problematic when someone dares to oppose the spread of woke ideology.
“This was sent to me by a follower. It is sad that some people allow this level of communication on social networks,” wrote Zala Klopčič, Vice-President of the Slovenian Democratic Youth (Slovenska demokratska mladina – SDM), the youth wing of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), and co-host of the podcast Na tekočem (Up To Date), in horror, after seeing the following post by a Facebook user named Alex Kodek: “I don’t understand why we don’t just massacre all the right-wingers and thus settle the whole thing peacefully.” The latter also wrote that the left is the result of the right having gone “too far in their evil madness”. “Once we have slaughtered the right, there will be no need for the left, and there will be peace,” he added.
Facebook user Kodek is from Kranj. Judging by the posts on his Facebook profile, it is clear that he makes no secret of his dislike for the largest opposition party – the SDS party, which he sees as an aggregate of “hatred towards everyone and everything”. In addition, he also seems to believe that people from the Štajerska region who voted for this party, should be civilised. Namely, sometime in the past, he wrote the following: “Geographically, the SDS won in middle-of-nowhere places and in Štajerska… Let’s civilise these places! Let them get their first theatres, concert halls, dance halls, cinemas, their first discotheques, let them get libraries and bookshops, let them get telephone exchanges, cybercafés, let them get their first hobbies and the opportunity to work creatively! Let them learn the Slovenian language again, and let’s confiscate their accordions for a few years and change the intended use of churches – to painting studios! Make farms vegan, and we can set up animal shelters there, and let’s set up reserves for anti-vaxxers! Together, we can achieve all this! Today, the rest of us voted to give them this chance! Tomorrow, let them help us build communities without Janšism!”
As far as Facebook is concerned, the hateful comment does not go against their standards
Since the recent comment pointed out by Klopčič is more than obviously a hate comment, which should have no place on social networks, one would more than rightly expect a strong reaction from Facebook. After all, young people use social networks to a large extent, and by tolerating posts such as this one, they are setting a completely wrong example. Such writings also encourage others to communicate disrespectfully, especially as they see that there are no sanctions for unacceptable behaviour. Facebook clearly has completely different criteria for what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. “We have reviewed this post and determined that this content does not violate our community standards,” Facebook said when it reviewed the post in question.
We cannot help but wonder – if the post had been directed against left-leaning voters, would Facebook have reacted in a similar manner? There is no doubt that, judging by our experience so far, they would have reacted strongly in the case of posts that would argue against the woke ideology. And since this ideology is often denounced on her Instagram profile by our Nova 24TV journalist Tanja Brkić, she has been stigmatised on Instagram. “Are you sure you want to follow medusa_veličastvena?” read the message that was displayed to her would-be followers in a pop-up within the app, when they tried to follow her profile. The notification continued, “This account has repeatedly posted false information that has been reviewed by independent fact-checkers and was in violation of community guidelines.” What this “false” information was, and what content it contained that violated the community’s “guidelines,” the app did not, of course, specify to the user.
Biased censors play a big role in this situation. Namely, we recently wrote about the results of a survey available on Sky News, which showed that Mark Zuckerberg‘s claims that Facebook has independent fact-checkers, is open to all perspectives and does not interfere in elections, are just not true. Instead, Meta, or Facebook, funds activists who filter information according to their personal beliefs and worldviews. Slovenia is, of course, no exception to this. In Slovenia, the so-called Oštro Centre for Investigative Journalism, which regularly takes on our media outlet, is considered one of the most trusted informants and distributors of the facts of the American billionaire megacorporations that own the popular social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and, until recently, Twitter). However, since in the case of the Facebook user Kodek’s post, there is a direct death threat, the question arises whether the police will at least react in this case, if Facebook already finds all this acceptable. Surely, we do not want to become a society where threats are made at every turn, without any consequences whatsoever?!
A. H.
