Russia Today (RT) has been blocked from posting photos, videos or any other content on its own Facebook channel. The ban will last until next Saturday, according to a Facebook bot, which means Russia Today is unable to report on the Donald Trump inauguration on Facebook.
Facebook blocks RT from posting until after Trump inauguration: https://www.rt.com/news/374157-facebook-blocks-rt-content/
The administrators of the Facebook page of the Russian news channel received a message they are not allowed to post new content on Facebook until Saturday. The ban was triggered by an algorithm during RT's broadcast of President Obama's final press conference. Hopefully this is a technical mistake, but I suppose the measure is a result of the plans of Facebook to tackle the so-called 'fake news'.
'Fake news'
By blocking access to Russia Today it seems the first step has been taken toward the censorship of news channels that do not spread the desired messages. This doesn't surprise me at all, because we have been often warned for this in the past few months. By calling an article 'fake news' websites can be censored if they post information that is harmful to the established order. Who decides if a news report is fake or not?
Censorship
Freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, but that law may apparently be violated if anyone threatens to undermine the power of the established order. Hopefully blocking Russia Today on Facebook was a mistake, but I fear this is only the beginning of a trend towards the structural filtering of news results.
This Is Why The World Needs Steem
The world desperately needs a social network without censorship like Steem. The Steem blockchain is always running and anytime you post something on the blockchain it is permanently recorded on the public ledger. People can downvote content if it's inappropriate, but even then everything will be permanently recorded and accessible on the Steem blockchain.
News source: https://www.rt.com/news/374157-facebook-blocks-rt-content/
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Maybe we should block them too if we hope to grow our marketcap like Facebook
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