It’s no secret that many people believe that Facebook has become a massive tool for censorship. Multiple social media platforms are now banning anything and everything that opposes certain political thoughts or corporate agendas, regardless of how credible it is and how much evidence there is to back up those claims. A lot of news that isn’t really false has simply been labelled as ‘fake news.’ It reminds me of what’s happening with vaccines today, for example, as the mainstream media (which never receives any type of censorship or “fake” labels) never seems to address the concerns and points that are made by multiple vaccine safety advocates, even when those concerns are expressed by scientists and doctors. Instead, mainstream media uses terms like ‘anti-vax conspiracy theorists’ and ‘fake news’ to make their point, while simultaneously influencing the minds of the masses.

Furthermore, if you look at some of Facebook’s employees, it’s not hard to see why they are censoring specific types of information. For example,  ex-DARPA Director and Google Executive Regina Dugan was an employee at Facebook. Nathan Gleicher worked at the US governments counsel for the US D.OJ. and is now the head of Cyber Security at Facebook. Joel Kaplan, a Deputy Chief of Staff for the US, is Facebook’s VP of Public Policy. There are several employees with similar backgrounds. Not many people know that Facebook has become a revolving door of employees between the corporation itself and the US government. We see this with various corporations like Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as pharmaceutical companies and the Centers  for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This is why we must carefully examine the recent piece Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes published in the New York times, calling for the break up of the social media giant due to the “staggering” and “unchecked” power of CEO Mark Zukerberg.

Before we go any further, I want to mention that a lot of blame has been put on Zuckerberg for Facebook’s actions as of late, particularly when it comes to the censorship of information, mass surveillance, and sharing of information that most people thought would remain private. But is it really only Zuckerberg? Or has Facebook been ‘taken over’ by ‘higher’ powers and made Zuckerberg the ‘fall guy,’ or the one to blame? Something to think about.

In his oped, co-founder Hughes points towards Facebook’s “sloppy privacy practices,” “violent rhetoric and fake news,” and the “unbounded drive to capture ever more of our time and attention.”