Conservatives fed up with what they see as a deliberate effort by Facebook to censor their content are set to officially launch the Tea Party Community , a conservative alternative to Facebook, this Saturday, Fox News' Todd Starnes reported Thursday.
Although the site will officially launch this weekend, it has already been live for some time and has garnered nearly 50,000 users, Starnes said.
Co-founder Ken Crow described the site as a "safe haven" where conservatives can share ideas and connect with like-minded people who are tired of Facebook's constant badgering and warnings.
“Most of us are subjected to censorship on Facebook,” he told Starnes. “I’ve been suspended there as have many of my friends. You also absorb a lot of abuse from liberals.”
Crow went on to say that he believes the social media giant is targeting conservatives.
“There’s absolutely no question in my mind,” he said.
"As many as 100 Facebook users contacted Fox News with complaints that the social networking site had either removed conservative content or blocked them for posting conservative content," Starnes wrote.
A number of conservatives have also contacted Examiner with similar complaints.
One of those who reached out to us is a 68-year-old Facebook user who said that she was blocked from posting after sharing a video link to just six pages.
"I don't know who to turn to," she said, adding that her health prevented her from participating with local conservative groups.
Many others have complained that Facebook called their posts and comments "irrelevant" before removing the posts and banning them.
Worse yet, Facebook allows sites like " I hate it when I wake up and Sarah Palin is still alive " while blocking or banning conservative sites, causing many to believe the social media site has a double standard with regard to political content.
Since the beginning of the year, a number of grassroots conservatives have found their ability to share links severely limited , with many being told to "slow down" after waiting for as long as an hour between posts.
“We’ve been hearing non-stop, email after email, tweet after tweet, of other folks who are facing the same issues,” said Miriam Weaver, whose page, " Chicks on the Right " was targeted by Facebook earlier this month.
After Starnes published a story about the incident, Facebook backed off and apologized .
But most conservatives who run pages on Facebook do not get the coverage Weaver got, and as a result, are frequent targets of liberal "trolls" who seek to silence them any way they can.
“Had we not gotten exposure on Fox News, we’d be off line right now,” said Amy Jo Clark. “Some of the smaller sites are getting pinged and hit by these liberal trolls and there’s no one they can talk to,” she added.
Clark went on to say that people are "disillusioned" and frustrated with Facebook and those who continually try to silence them.
Crow, who joined with Tim Selaty Sr. and Jr. to launch Tea Party Community last November, hopes the Facebook-like site will become a political networking site where Tea Party conservatives can organize for upcoming elections.
"But at the end of the day," Starnes wrote, " The Tea Party Community is a safe haven – a place where like-minded Americans can safely converse."
Facebook did not respond to Starnes' emails seeking comment.
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