Facebook Bans Zero Hedge Posts

Social media platform Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is reportedly blocking users from sharing content originating from Zero Hedge, a financial news website that has a "bearish bent and anti-establishment" tone, according to Bloomberg.

What Happened

Zero Hedge users attempting to share content on their Facebook accounts receive a message the link can't be shared because it "goes against our community standards."

Zero Hedge's pseudonymous author Tyler Durden said in a blog post that he's "surprised by this action as neither prior to this seemingly arbitrary act of censorship, nor since, were we contacted by Facebook with an explanation of what ‘community standard' had been violated or what particular filter or article had triggered the blanket rejection of all Zero Hedge content."

Why It's Important

Zero Hedge acknowledged Facebook's right to set its own rules as a for-profit enterprise in the blog post. 

The decision to ban Zero Hedge could be the result of "triggered readers" who set off Facebook's censorship algos, which by default blocked all content, the financial website said. 

Bloomberg said a message sent to Facebook for comment was not immediately returned. 

Zero Hedge speculated that Facebook may have actively banned the posts in reaction to the blog's content, which extensively covers the social media's "chronic privacy violations, mass abandonment by younger users, its gross and ongoing misrepresentation of fake users [and] ironically — in retrospect — its systematic censorship and back door government cooperation," the website said. 

What's Next

Zero Hedge said it wants to have a "constructive dialog" with Facebook over its decision to "impose a blanket ban" on its content. If this fails to take place, no one at Zero Hedge will "lose much sleep," as it said only a "tiny" fraction of its inbound traffic originates from Facebook.

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