Facebook is dominated by an obscure conservative website with only 3 employees: report
Judd Legum went down the rabbit hole of conservative Facebook, which has become dominated by conservative media over the past several years since the site began giving the right a technological advantage, Politico reported in 2020. But one company, run by just three people, is dominating the social media site.
Conservative Brief doesn't do any original reporting and mostly just aggregates tweets, videos and other reports with a right-wing spin. They're heavily pushing special counsel John Durham's probe and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. They promote Trump, Mike Lindell, and now even Kyle Rittenhouse. "Conservative Brief has been cited repeatedly for publishing false claims," said Legum.
But on Facebook, they're controlling much of the message, even surpassing social media engagement from legitimate outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post. The research done by Legum at his substack Popular Info revealed that the site benefits from an extensive network large conservative Facebook pages.
"Conservative Brief's engagement on Facebook has exploded over the last year," said the report, citing social media analytics site NewsWhip. "In February 2021, Conservative Brief attracted about 2,500 engagements (a combination of likes, reactions, comments, and shares) per article. Today, each article posted by Conservative Brief attracts well over 30,000 engagements."
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And if you go looking for the Facebook page for Conservative Brief, you won't find it. While there was one at one time, it no longer exists. The content is being exclusively promoted by others.
Meanwhile, major news outlets like the Times and Post have engagement that pales in comparison despite millions of followers. Such data only adds to complaints that Facebook's conservative staff is helping to game the system for the GOP. All the while, activists and conservative personalities attack Facebook for trying to censor them.
A shocking graphic from Legum shows the way that the site is using these high-profile pages:
Popular Information collection of screen captures showing conservatives spreading the same content.
"The article included a coupon code to purchase slippers from Lindell at a 50% discount. The same day this article was published to a slew of large conservative Facebook pages, sometimes with identical text," said the report.
They go into the tracking codes, which help them calculate the views coming off of each page. When Popular Info reported on what was being done in 2020, Facebook said they'd look into it. Suddenly, a host of Facebook pages have stopped sharing content from Conservative Brief. By 2021, they built their network even larger.
The networking idea first came from The Daily Wire while Ben Shapiro, was allegedly paying for traffic, the report recalled. Facebook "warned" the Daily Wire. Shapiro regularly has the top content on Facebook each day, but the Daily Wire's content has collapsed while Conservative Brief has skyrocketed.
Over the past several months, Facebook has pushed out an ad campaign trying to bring a human touch to the site while it digs out of years of bad press and PR disasters. They beg for regulations, knowing that a gridlocked government will never step in to deliver it.