Steven Singer’s post criticizing school choice as “a lie” was blocked by Facebook.
Facebook refuses to accept ads from the Network for Public Education critical of school choice or any other ads from NPE supporting public schools and its two sites on Facebook.
Campbell Brown was hired by Facebook earlier this year to be a liaison with news media and to help avoid “fake news.” Whatever it is she is doing, she plays an important role at Facebook.
Now we know that Facebook has admitted selling at least 3,000 ads to Russian troll farms that disseminated fake news about issues and Clinton, concentrating on key states like Wisconsin and Michigan. Brown was not working at Facebook at the time those 3,000 Russian ads were aimed at voters in strategic states. [The original version of this post suggested that she was there but I was wrong: she was hired by Facebook in early 2017, after the election, as noted above in the link.]
Why did Facebook sell ads to Russian troll farms in 2016 but refuses to sell any ads at all to the Network for Public Education?
Campbell Brown is a friend of Betsy DeVos. She wrote a post at her website “The 74” defending DeVos when she was nominated by Trump. She was on the board of DeVos’ pro-voucher, pro-choice, pro-charter, anti-public school American Federation for Children. DeVos gave money to Campbell Brown’s anti-tenure, anti-union website “The 74.” Brown’s husband Dan Senor is active in Republican politics.
Is there a pattern here?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The pattern is the misuse of the term “fake news”.
Fake news = what people like Brown and Suckerberg (aka. Zuckerberg) don’t want people to be exposed to even when it is based on history, facts, and reputable sources.
The real fake news is the revising of reality (what is actually happening) to create an alternative reality that never happened. This alternate reality that never happened was written so the oligarchs get the world they want.
The alternative reality (the real fake news) becomes the new reality, the news, the billionaire oligarchs like Suckerberg and his wife want us to think.
They (a large portion of the 0.1 percent) are rewriting history and erasing reality as it happens with their alternative facts (aka. lies).
For instance, Sandy Hook was a government hoax just like the recent mass murder in Las Vegas.
I would say that it’s Fact News that they seek to avoid spreading, but your point is well taken.
I agree. They don’t want people to accept news based on facts. Even biased news is based on an imbalance in the facts presented. Have you read the major report (I think that study came out of UCLA but I could be wrong on the source) on bias in the traditional media? That bias was measured by how many conservative vs liberal sources were quoted in a news piece. For instance, if a news site interviewed fewer conservatives for a piece, then that site was labeled with a liberal bias. The report never said they lied or were printing conspiracy theories without any basis in fact.
Bias means even an honest news site leans one way or the other, according to that major study and its report. It is a fact that the private sector media has always leaned one way or the other. During the era of the Fairness Doctrine, there was an attempt to create more balance in the media but Reagan ended that.
But the real fake news from the Alt-Right is based on lies and conspiracy theories without facts. They make them up as they go along.
In other words there is a lack of fidelity to truth not only in political discourse but in much of educational discourse
FACEBOOK = CENSORSHIP. It looks like they will not be able to hide behind the bad algorithm excuse on this one. Censoring the truth shows they are pushing their own corporate PC version of fake news, aka propaganda. Chan and Zuckerberg are circling the rabbit hole drain on their way to join the old money oligarchs in their Let Them Eat Cake paradise.
So right on. Chan and Zuckerberg are trolls.
No, they’re cyborgs,many thus far more dangerous.
Cluelessly disconnected White Saviors looking “down” on those they believe must be “saved.”
It’s time we “starve the beasts” of FB and Google.
When FB shuts down dissidents in the Ukraine and supporters of public schools, it becomes a menace to a free society. It has become the de facto American version of China’s infamous Golden Shield, wherein every citizen’s movement is monitored and censorship is rampant.
I have switched to Opera as my browser at home (Our school district is tethered to Google via chromebooks for every child from 1st grade on up. )
There are also alternatives to FB. Diaspora looks promising.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/six-alternatives-google-facebook-battle-online-privacy-1472156
One more reason to leave FB:
http://projectcensored.org/23-facebook-buys-sensitive-user-data-offer-marketers-targeted-advertising/
The 74 is about as “agnostic” as Campbell Brown.
Here’s the current front page: 2 anti-union stories, one story attacking Matt Damon and three stories promoting charter schools.
Oh, they’re also promoting “Reinventing America’s Schools”- that’s the book they’re all pushing that advocates privatizing all public schools. There are fawning reviews of this book all over ed reform.
There is no “debate” in ed reform. It’s an echo chamber.
There are two questions they debate- how quickly to privatize and whether to regulate the newly privatized systems that are slated to replace the current public systems.
https://www.the74million.org/
From the 74 “review” of the movie
“While aping all the motions his mother would have him do before throngs of aging unionized teachers ”
I guess I will have to add to my sarcastic personal description which usually says “union thug” so that it reads “aging union thug”.
Public schools buy a heck of a lot of ed tech. The US Department of Education actually links to Google Education when they’re promoting ed tech purchases by public schools.
As their largest (education sector) customers, public schools could probably insist tech companies stop attacking public schools.
They’re hugely excited about capturing the public school market to sell devices, programs and services. Insist they stop lobbying against your schools.
Facebook isn’t entering “the education space” out of the goodness of their hearts- they know public schools give them entry to young people and they need young people. Giving something “free” as an entry point to future sales isn’t “innovative” at all- it’s been done in sales for 200 years.
Make them earn this market. They haven’t proved any of these products “work” in schools- at least insist they stop lobbying against you before you hand them billions of dollars in sales.
That will NEVER happen since Randi and Lilly are part of the whole ed tech scheme.
We are about to enter contract negotiations with our district, which has spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Edtech and chromebooks. (Not to mention $1.5 million on Astroturf.) But the district is already warning us that they are “broke.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached out to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman to learn how to “move the needle” on policy issues. According to leaked emails:
“He’s begun to think about whether/how he might want to shape advocacy efforts to support his philanthropic priorities and is particularly interested in meeting people who could help him understand how to move the needle on the specific public policy issues he cares most about,” Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer, said in an email to John Podesta, who was not only Hillary’s campaign chair but Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff and Obama’s transition team co-chair.
“He wants to meet folks who can inform his understanding about effective political operations to advance public policy goals on social oriented objectives (like immigration, education or basic scientific research).”
“Happy to do,” Podesta responded.
Read more at The Hill: http://thehill.com/policy/technology/301608-leaked-emails-zuckerberg-wanted-to-pick-podestas-brain-on-immigration
I don’t expect this to be received well and there’s a part of me thinking I shouldn’t even post it here, but I would be remiss if I didn’t so here goes. As fast as I could, I researched and tested Steven’s post. It did not get kicked out after I posted it, either as straight text or as a link. Which led me to Facebook’s published guidelines for community behavior which are not very clear, at least to someone who isn’t a lawyer. https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards .
But they do give some indication of what FB is trying to accomplish. I believe there are some issues you can infer from the community standards that would apply to the tags Steven uses to target the audiences, and in the language and references in the article. I can’t tell if at this point Steven is back up but I can see his Gadfly on the Wall Blog and his personal page, the posts referenced by Diane and I was able to comment.
On the second part of Diane’s post she references boosting by NPE. Boosting is considered by Facebook to be Advertising and is regulated in a variety of ways. Advertising Agencies employ healthy staffs to adhere to FCC regulations and a whole host of local and state regulations when it comes to placing advertising in social media and in broadcast. No allowances are made for not knowing the regulations. For anyone who uses the boosting functionality on Facebook I do recommend they read the Ad Policies section of FB https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/ . I would add that it pays to be very savvy in the legal language of standards and practices in advertising. Being on the right side of an issue is a perception, not a given. The practices may seem unfair, when they threaten the cause you believe in, but a deeper exploration would reveal the immense complexities unleashed by the creation of Facebook only a few short years ago. The assumption of censorship, however justified, demands exploration. Understanding Broadcaster and Digital Platform policies and how they were formulated is required. There is nothing that requires us to explore it, we can shout censorship as loud as we want, but understanding how the system functions and then using it to our advantage seems like a more interesting way to proceed. Since I’m creating digital video content that is incredibly labor intensive and time consuming, I have to be sure it will get through to the audience, otherwise all the work is for nothing. Its amazing what you can get away with, if you know the rules, and the rules to skip as well.
Michael,
Is there anything in the rules that explain why FB would refuse to accept paid advertising from NPE?
My, my, when it rains it certainly does pour. More on Facebook shenanigans that looks suspiciously like it has Campbell’s finger prints all over it: https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/10/07/facebook-reportedly-plans-work-weekly-standard-serial-misinformer-fact-checking/218172
Remember, she is the daughter of a long-time Louisiana state pol, Jim Brown, who was a Democrat when in office, but he would likely be a right wing Republican if he ran today. I’m sure she got quite an education in Louisiana corruption.