There are companies that will go over the cliff for their lefty policies. Facebook’s Zuckerberg has never struck me as the type.
Facebook’s censorship is largely a result of external pressure by the EU and Democrats, and internal pressure from its more ‘woke’ employees. And the MRC survey provides compelling evidence that censorship will be very bad for its bottom line.
Facebook is at risk of losing 32% of its conservative users due to concerns the social media giant is censoring its content, a new national omnibus survey by McLaughlin & Associates reveals.
Sponsored by the Media Research Center (MRC), the national survey of conservatives who are likely voters, conducted August 22-27, 2018, shows that 89.5% of conservatives have used Facebook at some point and that less than half (47.7%) are both using it and committed to continuing to do so:
Of conservatives who have used Facebook, 32.3% say they have either left (7.5%), or are considering leaving (24.8%), Facebook due to its censorship of conservative views.
What’s more, nearly two-thirds (66.9%) of conservative likely voters have less trust in Facebook than they did a year ago. Likewise, nearly two-thirds (66.1%) do not trust Facebook to treat all political views equally and 64.6% believe sites like Facebook are intentionally censoring conservatives and conservative ideas.
Facebook, unlike Google, has a very fragile monopoly.
Google is fairly confident that nothing can take its place. But Facebook is very fragile. It’s been buying out potential competitors. And search appears to be a force of habit, but social media habits change fairly quickly. People ‘google’ automatically, regardless of how bad the results are, but social is very much a matter of pack and trend. When people’s friends leave, it creates a ripple effect.
And people can and do stop using social all the time.
This survey sends a warning that Facebook can’t expect to censor political dissent without paying a serious economic price.
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