Is Fox News Filtering Comments to Delete Parts of Trump Jr.’s Tweets?
Donald Trump Jr. probably wishes he could take back those tweeted out emails of the now infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer and a whole bunch of other people.
Particularly this part: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Some Reddit users are now freaking out because they say that Fox News appears to be doing the deleting for Jr. in the online comments section of at least one of the network’s posts on the Trump-Russia scandal.
On Friday, Redditor EfAllNazis described an attempt to type the above–mentioned text from Trump Jr.’s emails into the comments section of a monologue from the Todd Starnes Show called, “Don’t tread on me, you Trump–hating traitors.” But the words kept disappearing, while other comments, particularly pro–Trump ones, not containing that part of the emails stayed put.
“I changed out some vowels to áéí etc and it posted. But not ten minutes later even that was added to the filter,” EfAllNazis said in a Reddit post. “Fox News was actively ensuring their audience never saw those words.”
EfAllNazis shared screenshots of all of this, and then repeated the process several times. All efforts apparently led back to the same conclusion:
Other Redditors repeated the experiment and put it on YouTube:
A user named dudeatwork posted the steps (and a video):
Connected to VPN, open private browser window:
- Create new account (Account A), verify email address, add comment that is the quote OP referenced. Comment is visible when I am logged into account A.
- Connect to different VPN endpoint, and load page on different browser. Comment from account A is not visible.
- (To test if new accounts have “intro” periods where a brand new account can’t post immediately) I registered a completely new account B from different VPN, verified email, and posted a pro-Trump comment from B.
- Again, refreshed from different browser under a different VPN. My pro-Trump comment is visible while in an “anonymous” session (aka, no account logged in), so it appears there is no “grace” period for new accounts in terms of posting comments. The pro-Trump comment is even visible from the account A after I refresh.
That is insane.