Facebook Threatens to Censor Conservative Hodgetwins on Same Day NYT Laments Their Success
__Q+ and Q I don’t understand why social media are still allowed to sway elections by stopping conservatives, when the most important election of our lifetime is less than 70 days away…why hasn’t this stopped?==
Facebook has threatened to blacklist the page of conservative comedy duo Kevin Hodge and Keith Hodge, better known as the Hodgetwins, on the same day that The New York Times identified them among the most successful conservative content creators on the platform.
The duo rose to fame on YouTube, where they amassed 1.4 million subscribers with viral videos. In 2018, they set up a second channel, “Conservative Twins,” focused on political content, which has accumulated over a million subscribers.
Their Facebook page is also enormously successful, with over 5.8 million followers and over 3.3 million likes.
Earlier today, the New York Times published an article lamenting the success of conservative content creators on Facebook, with the Hodgetwins featured as a prominent example.
The NYT complains that the two most popular posts about Black Lives Matter on the platform are videos from the Hodgetwins critiquing the movement:
The most-shared Facebook post containing the term “Black Lives Matter” over the past six months is a June video by the right-wing commentators The Hodgetwins, which calls the racial justice movement a “damn lie.” The second most-shared Black Lives Matter post? A different viral video from The Hodgetwins, this one calling the movement a “leftist lie.” (The Hodgetwins also have the 4th, 6th, and 12th most shared posts.)
On the same day that the article was published, the Hodgetwins reported on Twitter that Facebook threatened to unpublish their page.
“They are interfering with the election!” said the Hodgetwins. “Conservatives are being censored on FB.”
Facebook’s action was condemned by the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
“How is it that the social media masters allow some of the most vile people on the left to say and do anything without threat of censure or deplatforming, but conservative comedians are going to be thrown off platforms for being funny while speaking the truth?” asked Don Jr.
Former Army national guardsman Mark Lutchman, whose video was shared by the Hodgetwins and used to issue a community standards violation against them, said his video was also taken down.
Although the video was removed from the Hodgetwins’ page, Lutchman noted that it is still available on his own page, The Lutchman Report. In the video, Lutchman discusses the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, defending Rittenhouse’s actions in Wisconsin as acts of self-defense.
“I’m praying for Kyle,” said Lutchman in the video.
A Hodgetwins video called “AOC: You Crazy” was also removed by Facebook and used to issue a community guidelines violation against the page. The video is still available on YouTube:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/08/28/facebook-threatens-to-censor-conservative-hodgetwins-on-same-day-nyt-laments-their-success/