In early 2019, I listened to a Scott Adams podcast during which he opined that the tech tyrants would never let another 2016 outcome happen again—namely, that a non-Democrat would win the presidential election. He was right. In 2020, Twitter (before Elon Musk) and Facebook went into full censorship mode. Twitter/X under Musk’s aegis is better now (although imperfect). Facebook, however, is back at its old tricks. The method is superficially different from that used in 2020, but the result is the same: conservative ideas are censored.

You all remember the old Facebook fact-checking approach, which was especially useful during the COVID era. This funny meme reflects how Facebook used to (and, I must say, still does) shut down conservative commentary:

The new approach holds that conservatives who post statements that are popular with conservatives are improperly seeking “likes” and “follows.” Although I never post on Facebook, I still follow it and have repeatedly seen this pattern. One of my friends sent me an example of what happened to him.

My friend linked to Scott Johnson’s essay entitled “The Kamala Correlative,” which looks at the problems the Democrats are currently having with the man they once so assiduously protected.

The Johnson post is a very simple one. In it, Johnson notes reports that Hunter prepared Biden for his disastrous interview with George Stephanopoulos, and Johnson comments that this prep might have accounted for some of the things Biden said. Johnson also suspected that it was Biden himself who came up with the idea that if “the Lord Almighty comes down,” that might drive him from the race.

Johnson suggested, too, that Biden might be faking his madness to avoid addressing substantive questions. That’s an intriguing theory, although I disagree with it. I’ve been around people with dementia often (it happens when you have the blessing of parents who live to old age), and they can be very canny in the early stages at avoiding questions they can’t answer, but they’re still suffering from dementia.

Another thing Johnson did was to include the cover page from the New York Post’s paper edition, which had a marvelous pun: “Joe adds insult to infirmary.” Finally, Johnson said that Stephanopoulos represented the Democrat party writ large.

In other words, nothing in Johnson’s post was untrue or outside of the Pale. It was standard Republican commentary on the Democrats’ candidate and the problems Democrats are facing.

And then there was Johnson’s last paragraph, which my friend copied verbatim into his attempted Facebook post:

There is a correlative to the Lord’s imminent descent to whisper in Biden’s ear. That is the Kamala correlative. Vice President Harris is to be greeted as their (and therefore our) savior. The end times is nigh.

Almost instantly, Facebook shut my friend down:

If the image is blurry, let me restate here the reason that Facebook refused to allow my friend’s post: “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” In other words, “Your post is spam and/or clickbait.”

I want you to review Johnson’s post and think hard about whether there is any reason whatsoever for the Facebook algorithm (or some Facebook-trained, low-wage worker in a squalid backroom office in a Third World country) to have shut down my friend’s post as spam and/or clickbait. If there’s a reason, I’m missing it.

Again, my friend’s experience is not a one-off. I belong to a conservative Facebook group and people in the group are frequently reporting that the same thing is happening to them.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s chastened affect during congressional testimony, he is not chastened at all. He and his team of far-left lunatics are as determined as ever to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. During non-election seasons, these operatives milk all Facebook users for information that Facebook sells to advertisers and otherwise turns into a profit. And during the election season, Facebook shuts down conservatives to ensure Democrat victories.

As a reminder, we’ve been on the receiving end of direct and indirect Facebook censorship for years. Google, too, has been a problem. It substantially downgrades our posts in internet searches, and Google accounts for over 90% of all searches. In addition, directly or indirectly (that is, through Google or ad brokers), Google accounts for 90% of all Internet advertising. Google used COVID as an excuse to decrease the revenue percentage sites get from the ads on their site.

We used to get enormous amounts of traffic from Facebook and Google searches. This traffic, in turn, translated to a healthy revenue from advertising. Now, our traffic comes from loyal readers and lots and lots and lots of ads. So, yes, we know all those ads are incredibly irritating, but without them, we cannot pay our server or staff costs.

That leaves our loyal readers with two choices: Suffer the ads or get a subscription, which gives subscribers both an ad-free experience and the ability to leave comments. Personally, I hope you can and do choose the latter option.