Facebook just deleted my profile photo. A cartoon which I thought was quite humorous and already had more than 100 likes.
I wish I had the photoshop talent/exactatude to make such a cool and funny image, but the credit for designing it goes to Susan D. More Facebook censorship on behalf of the corporate education reformers.
We discussed the coordinated Facebook censorship of Teach For America posts in the first ten minutes of the Truth For American episode with Diane Ravitch that was taped LIVE at the Network For Public Education Conference.
I suspect the same education reformer internet black ops is responsible.
The post covered Mapping the Terrain: (Censored) Charter School Reform, and Corporate Sponsorship, a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Education Policy that revealed the relationships between (Censored) and federal charter school “reform” to interrogate how policy decisions are shaped by networks of elite individuals, organizations, and private corporations. The article document how (Censored) is a central and important node in a network promoting the rapid expansion of charter schools, a reform effort that amplifies the voices of an elite network of privately sponsored organizations and individuals, while potentially disenfranchising the voices of community members and educational professionals.
On March 19, 2014, I received a notice in writing from Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, the publisher of the article, stating that they had been made aware that the article was posted online and banned Cloaking Inequity from providing a link to a pdf of the article.
I thought this was just a coincidence at the time. But I think its notable that it is the only letter that I have EVER received from a publisher restriciting access to a pdf of a peer reviewed article on Cloaking Inequity. So if my mother or a friend or a school board member or a superintendent would like to read about (Censored), then they will have to penetrate the subscription paywall of Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
This is a of course a bigger issue in academia, predatory journals. It is a travesty that we write an article for a journal then we have to pay them to read it. We don’t need the publishers, we do 95% of the work anyways.
Fast forward to 2015.
Jameson Brewer and I started a new podcast called Truth For America about (Censored).
What I found troubling is that when I started sharing this new podcast on Facebook, I was incarcerated in Facebook jail for two weeks and banned from groups.
What is Facebook jail? It is when Facebook bans you from a particular activity. Typically you are banned as a result of posting an article when it has been reported or flagged as spam. What’s interesting is that this ban has begun to extend to other articles about (Censored).
In March, it was brought to my attention by Dr. Susana Maria Muñoz that a Washington Post article about the (Censored) layoffs had also been flagged by Facebook as “abusive.”
A (Censored) supporter at the time chalked it up on Twitter to copyright claim on the REM music in our podcast. But it turns out we have ALWAYS had written permission directly from the band to use the song World Leader Pretend. We suspect some sort of complaint triggered the temporary take down of the Truth For America podcast.
REM’s manager personally contacted YouTube and the Truth For America series went back up.
Then, this week Diane Ravitch began to post the Truth For America series starting with the first episode. The hits on episode 1 doubled to about 1,000 across platforms. We were AGAIN slapped with a copyright claim from YouTube which temporarily took the Truth For America podcast down, even though we have ALWAYS had written permission directly from REM to use their song.
And then yesterday, Jameson Brewer posted a new Washington Post article in the Badass Teachers Facebook page about the 35% drop in (Censored) recruitment and was immediately sent to Facebook jail. Other people are starting to notice these coincidences on social media.
So do you think all of this circumstantial evidence of CENSORING is purely coincidence? Or cyber warfare?
Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact—like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime.
For all of Cloaking Inequity’s posts on (Censored) click here.
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