What else are the tech overlords supposed to do, allow us to think for ourselves?

Rich Cromwell writes in the Federalist about the Gosnell film which opens next Friday.

On May 24, Facebook expanded its dedication to providing content as it sees fit to boosted and promoted posts, that is posts made on an official page which the owner attempts to promote in an attempt to reach a wider audience. It’s under this policy that the movie “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” found itself being censored by the tech behemoth.

“Gosnell,” the story of infamous abortionist Kermit Gosnell, opens Oct. 12. Its producer, Phelim McAleer, naturally wants to publicize the film as much as possible. He told me why he made the film:

"We are journalists and filmmakers and this is an incredible story. I’ve spent 25 years as an investigative journalist and this is one of the biggest stories I’ve ever worked on and it went largely unreported. This is a true story that was not reported on by the mainstream media in a meaningful way. There are real victims here whose story deserves to be told and we’ve set out to shine a light on the crimes of Gosnell and how the government allowed him to operate for 17 years without protecting women and children, which is what journalism is supposed to do. We want to tell the truth because it is extremely important that people have the facts before they make a decision‒especially with so many partisan journalists believing they are part of a political movement‒not reporting the facts as they are supposed to do."

Even making the film was an uphill battle. McAleer noted the difficulties in getting it from concept to the screen. “The Silicon establishment do not want this story told,” he said. “Kickstarter refused to let us crowdfund to fund the film and NPR have just rejected us from advertising the movie on the taxpayer-funded station. Now Facebook is trying to censor the movie by preventing its creators from advertising on Facebook. They really, really don’t want this story told.”

...What else are the tech overlords supposed to do, allow us to think for ourselves?

...Facebook is censoring this story and destroying our attempts to get the news about this film out to the public. Facebook is essentially silencing these children and women whom Gosnell murdered. This is content journalists should be covering but Facebook is putting their thumb on the scale because they do not like the content. Audiences want to see this content and we’re willing to pay for the advertising but again they are demonstrating their bias against a true crime story. As independent filmmakers, we have a limited budget and Facebook was a mainstay of our outreach efforts.

...McAleer was never told why his posts were rejected. He said:

They simply state it’s not been approved and to check their standards, but it does not give you a specific reason why this post could be not be promoted at all to a wider audience. It’s clear it is the pro-life audience that they don’t want to encourage or provide content to. They really hate anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the liberal world view. They hate diversity of thought.

It’s hard to discover what’s going on in the world and to share and express what matters to users when Facebook is preemptively deciding which of those occurrences and opinions are copacetic, which thoughts are allowable and which aren’t, which movies can advertise and which cannot. Some might even say that there’s a word for that, though in 2018, it’s not a popular one to reference, especially when the fate of the republic supposedly rests with our tech overlords and not the citizenry, at least those citizens fortunate enough to be born.

Read more here.