Meta can act like they don't know what's happening, but they do. As do all the other tech giants. They've been censoring and curating people feeds for a long time. This story is amusing since it's one instance where a "Team Blue" was affected. In general, it's usually "Team Red" channels are the ones getting censored.
There is an interesting project America's Digital Shield that studies these practices (https://americasdigitalshield.com/). They capture "ephemeral" content from search results and social feeds from volunteers, with a balanced distribution of the political spectrum.
Basically, the idea is that none of the content we get fed from tech giants is unbiased, even search results are manipulated to affect people one way or the other, especially when it comes to politics and elections. It's pretty upsetting once you understand what's happening.
The only major tech platform that leans red is Twitter after musk bought it, unsurprisingly.
Mind you, I’m not taking sides here. I gave up on both teams at least a decade ago. I just don’t think this is behavior we should allow from tech companies either direction.
My not is that having a slant is perfectly acceptable, having tech companies so large that their comment policies affect the Overton Window isn’t.
I don’t have to care if the Washington Post or Financial Times have a political leaning, there are alternatives. Less so with Instagram. You can pry Facebook out of my mothers dead hands when that day comes.
the 'team red is being silenced' nonsense was, and is, a transparently synthetic attempt to promote right-wing discourse no matter how ridiculous it was. You may remember that Elon "free speech absolutist" Musk was the champion of this meme, claiming that Twitter was suppressing right wing views, and that every single one of his and Matt Taibbi's claims turned out to have been false or overblown.
There is an interesting project America's Digital Shield that studies these practices (https://americasdigitalshield.com/). They capture "ephemeral" content from search results and social feeds from volunteers, with a balanced distribution of the political spectrum.
Basically, the idea is that none of the content we get fed from tech giants is unbiased, even search results are manipulated to affect people one way or the other, especially when it comes to politics and elections. It's pretty upsetting once you understand what's happening.