There's about an 80% chance you've come to this website and article by clicking a link through Facebook. Therein lies the greatest pickle. Facebook knows you use Facebook despite how ever many times you've proclaimed how much you may hate it. Even if you don't use it, how many other people in your life do? Exactly. Welcome to the social media conundrum. Facebook knows it is one of the largest and most trafficked websites in the world. It knows it has people hooked, it knows how many people depend on it for news, information, and connecting with people in the real world. As such, many of the minions stacking its ranks are leveraging the platform's power in ways altogether frightening and tyrannical. They've been engaging in the censorship war for years, making advancement after advancement as the rest of us mostly concede territory while running to the same platform to bitch about it.

Less than one month out from a presidential election, Facebook is moving its queen in for a checkmate, targeting pages and groups it has deemed are "spreading misinformation," or "violating its community standards" as a reason to throttle those pages' reach. What that means is, websites like this, which offer counter opinions to what the leftist media has deemed "truth" aren't getting to you. It means if you or other organizations share stories, memes or direct status updates on your personal pages, you might also get throttled if not loose access to Facebook entirely. Before I dive into how Nazi-ish this behavior is, let me first provide recent examples of what Facebook is actively doing to the Steven Crowder Official Page. It's a long accounting which I've appropriately headlined for your skimming pleasure. If you'd rather just get to the call to action, scroll all the way to "What you can do." See. I just care so much about you.

Sharing repeated "Clickbait"

Yesterday, October 6, I was notified the reach on the Steven Crowder Official Page would be limited due to the repeated sharing of clickbait. Excuse me, "clickbait." Here are the two articles Facebook deemed "clickbait."

And this one:

Firstly, let's play the definition game. What is clickbait? How are we defining it?

What clickbait is and is not

I define clickbait as a sensationalized headline providing little to no context. Example: "You Won't BELIEVE What Trump Said Last Night!" as there's no context to what subject Trump was speaking, where he was speaking, who he was speaking to etc. But looking at the two examples above, it's clear the first article is about NBC finally reporting on Sweden's reaction to COVID and being surprised by what they found. Plenty of context. You know the story is about NBC, Sweden's reaction to COVID, and the reason to click the entire article is what NBC discovered. Mainly that Sweden is doing just fine. Sorry panic porn addicts.

In article number two, you know the article is about an insane liberal demanding cops do something about Trump supporters at Walter Reed. The reason to click is to see how the cops reacted to her. Plenty of context given. Clickbait would've been "You Have to SEE This Insane Liberal Meltdown!" as it gives no context into who or what the story is about, instead sensationalizing the nature of the liberal's meltdown.

Creating a headline is an art form

I don't mean to bore you with inside baseball minutia, but it matters. These two article headlines were extensively discussed by Brodigan and myself so as to create a headline that would tell YOU exactly what you'd get for a click, while still giving you a reason to click. You may say we should give away the entire farm, but then you won't click the article, you'll instead hit a reaction emoji and keep scrolling. My utterances of certainty are backed up by five years of experience. Trust me, when we tell you everything that happened in the story in the headline, you won't click the article we've written about it. Which rather defeats the purpose of writing an article about it.

The real reason Facebook hates those articles

Here's an alternate point of view to those two articles above, and our website at large.

In the first case, how dare anyone mock NBC while also broadcasting how Sweden didn't tank its entire way of life over COVID-19, or stoked fears about the little virus that could. In the second case, how dare Trump supporters look good while a liberal protesting them looked like an idiot, only to be dismissed by police officers since she was so bat-shit-soup cray cray. Do the kids still say "cray cray"? There's a chance I'm losing touch with the lingo in my advancing age.

In other words, how dare anyone question or challenge leftist dogma. How dare anyone try to convince others the leftist dogma is anything other than fact.

Think I'm being unreasonable? Let's keep going, shall we?

Violating Facebook Community Standards

I received a notification the Steven Crowder Official Page had repeatedly shared clickbait. Which I debunked above. On that Page Quality page I also have three notifications about "Community Standards violations" which is putting our page at risk of being unpublished. Aka de-platformed.

See how it says in small, unbolded print "notified October 6" then is says "You shared this" with You bolded in attempts to make me feel bad (lol, no). Here's the rest of the wanton Community Standards violations which Brodigan shared and, according to Facebook, was also notified.

Yesterday, October 6, I asked Brodigan if he had in fact been notified of these egregious violations issued by the brown-shirted commandants pecking their keyboards somewhere in Menlo Park. He had not. I believe him, for when I saw this morning that I'd shared some kind of dangerous content on the Steven Crowder Page, I skipped over to my personal notification page in hopes of seeing what rule I'd unknowingly disobeyed.

Behold, my findings:

No violations. Thank you for helping to keep Facebook safe for everyone.

Aw. Doesn't that just you feel like warm butter.

But Courtney, you say,maybe they emailed you about it.

Nope. No emails. No clarification as to what possible standard I violated. No gold stars for being so safe on Mark's book of faces. No command to stand down lest I become banished from the internet's public square.

But as it so happens, my memory from yesterday is clear. All I had to do was scroll through the page's timeline looking for a post I made which had been purged by our social media betters. Yesterday, October 6, I copy and pasted a tweet from @scrowder directly into Facebook. That tweet was this:

With one modification. I typed "COVID" rather than "CoVid." I don't know why Steven types it that way either.

Thou shalt not spread good COVID news

The above good news about COVID is what Facebook decided violated their community standards. How? I can't know for certain since Facebook didn't tell me. There was no way to appeal this removal, there was no way to tell them their violation ruling was wrong and that, due to them being so wrong, they should grab a sharp object and shove it up their back holes while digging around up there in search of their heads. These are just the thoughts I have not-that-privately with people I work with most closely. And now you. Feel special? You should.

If you're curious as to what these elusive community standards are, here's a handy link filled with abundant vagueness. Pay special attention to this box about the Wuhan virus:

How is Facebook defining "harmful content"? Your guess is as good as mine. What about "remove content that has the potential to contribute to real-world harm"? Not defined. "Hate speech"? No definition is ever given, but the closest I've come to getting one is "You know it when you see it." Kind of like a spider web to the face. Other definitions never given in this little blurb: assess speech trends, experts, policy guidance and what it means to be "safe."

Put more simply, Facebook makes up whatever rules it feels like in order to push its agenda forward. What is its agenda? In my opinion: total thought control. Go ahead and tell me I'm paranoid. Go ahead and tell me I'm being unreasonable that a website which boasts hundreds of millions of active users isn't engaging in thought manipulation by either removing information it doesn't like, fact-checking articles it doesn't like, or threatening to unpublish a massive page for reasons it never defines. While you're asking those questions, you should no longer ask why I casually compare Facebooks operatives to Germany's most notorious baddies. Some may say these comparisons are obvious, but I say I don't care.

All I included above were trivial examples of what Facebook has deemed dangerous enough to banish our page from its platform. It is our personal experience with the platform, and it doesn't even include that one time Gizmodo wrote an article about Facebook specifically targeting Steven Crowder. But if you want to know more about that instance, click this link. After clicking that link, why not make it a day and click this one about Steven filing a legal motion against Facebook.

But Courtney, you say, if Facebook is so terrible, why do you even still have a page? Good question. Let me answer with another picture.

Over 2.8 million people have liked the page, and over 3.1 million people follow it. Those are not insignificant numbers, and as a business we can't just flip the middle digits to the platform which all of those people use regularly. Until 3.1 million people sign up for the newsletter, Facebook is where much of the action is.

And I hate that. So should you.

What you can do

Sure, today Facebook is grabbing a grease pen to create a little mustache, but Facebook now owns Instagram. Jack Dorsey runs Twitter. Susan Wojcicki commands YouTube. Google isn't exactly run by libertarian patriots waxing eloquent about Adam's Smith's principles of laissez-faire. We can all mount the moral high horse about how terrible, horrible, no good very bad people running our internet are until the poor steed gets saddle sores. Thus far our complaining has accomplished bupkis. Millions of people still use Facebook. Thousands sign up for the newsletter. Millions of people are still subscribed to our YouTube channel. Thousands are signed up for Mug Club (I'm not sure how many thousands for either, by the way).

That's simple math, folks. Over the years we've said Big Tech is out to get conservatives. Over the years we've said Big Tech is trying to manipulate the election. Over the years we've talked about the dangers of echo chambers and bubbles, and how it's important to do your due diligence all on your own.

The feces have done smacked the ceiling fan. There is a chance Facebook will unpublish our page, for whatever reason hit by the dart on their "LOL, F*CK THE CONSERVATIVES" board. It's not just us, by the way. Facebook is engaging in this censorship behavior across multiple pages on Facebook's naughty list, over infractions like sharing memes or articles Facebook doesn't like.

Remember, an election is right around the corner. The stakes are high.

Information is what moves and shapes our modern world. Big Tech wants to control what information is allowed and shared so it can mold what our future world becomes. You, the person still reading this long-winded affair, must take the control in your own hands.

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We've asked you to sign up for our newsletter often. Here we are again. This website and our newsletter are our direct access to you, without fact-checkers, without Facebook nazis, without hate speech guidelines, COVID safety warnings, or "but they're mostly peaceful rioters smashing buildings with love cudgels" malarkey. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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Yeah, you've heard us make this pitch a bunch too. Here we are again, making it again, telling you we're serious about all this censorship. You haven't seen half of it, since it's been censored by Facebook. If you think we're being paranoid that YouTube could nuke us too, lol at you. So become a Mug Clubber here.

All of us at Louder with Crowder are here because of you. We needed your support then, we need it now. We want to stay connected with you through this election and many others after it. If we want to be in this together, then let's be in it together.

Lastly, fuck Facebook.