Facebook Sells Disabled Iraq Vet $300,000 In Ads, Then Deletes His Influential Pages

[DamianTV]

Grassroots because blogging is a Grassroots effort.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archive...00-in-ads-then-deletes-his-influential-pages/
(Apparently Ron Paul Institute likes Zero Hedge)

Written by Tyler Durden
Saturday October 20, 2018

Facebook banned several pages operated by disabled by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, after he says he spent $300,000 on advertising. The social media giant removed without warning Kolfage's Right Wing News and Military Grade Coffee Company (which donates 10 percent of all profits to veteran organizations), in a site-wide effort to crack down on "misinformation" on the network.

Right Wing News alone had over 3 million followers at the time of its banning.

According to his new wesbite, Kolfage, a triple amputee, explains:

I’m not a 'conservative.' I’m not a 'liberal.' I’m an American, with deep beliefs in what our country stands for. I proved this by vowing to protect and fighting for Americas greatest tenet: free speech.

Many Americans have fought for these political freedoms … freedom of speech … and every American has enjoyed those freedoms … UNTIL TODAY. On October 11, 2018, Facebook shut down thousands of Facebook accounts for their political opinions, saying in effect that they don’t have a 'legitimate political argument.' STOP SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP NOW! -Fight4freespeech.com​

Kolfage says his "income as a father and husband is threatened," and that he "invested over $300,000 in ads at Facebook's own request," according to Breitbart's Lucas Nolan.

In a Facebook post on his personal page, Kolfage wrote "Facebook lied, they shut down my page because it was conservative, powerful, and the elections are in 2 weeks.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

In 2004, Kolfage was on his second deployment in Iraq when his airbase came under rocket attack. He would lose both legs and an arm as a 107mm rocket shell "exploded about three feet" away, throwing him into the air and against a wall of sandbags.

Airman Kolfage’s best friend was thrown from his bed during the attack. He heard the screams and rushed outside to find his friend bloody, mangled, and clinging to life. The Airman and a medic rushed to help Airman Kolfage, who was struggling to breathe with only one lung after the other had collapsed. Brian’s friend desperately tried to divert his attention from the seriousness of his injuries, but calmly, Airman Kolfage assured him that he already knew the extent of his wounds, and that he just wanted to go home to his family. -Briankolfage.com​

...

Full article at link.

First argument that will come up is Facebook is a Private Company. Lets see what RON PAUL himself has to say about that:


https://youtu.be/BZh4ow0yhZM?t=252

That video is at this thread: The Corporatist War On Free Speech - Are We A Nation Of Sheep?

And a quote from what Ron Paul said:

From Ron Paul, at the 5 minute mark:

“The more I think about it, the more my conclusion is that these corporations need more charges made against them as being part of the government than working hard to protect their rights as an independent company. They’re not an independent company. If you look at the way they were established, if you look at their contracts, their immunity...they break their contract, if you sue them, they have immunity, just like government has immunity.”

 

[Itsback]

I deleted my 3 facebook accounts and came here.

 

[oyarde]

I deleted my 3 facebook accounts and came here.

I never had a facebook account .

 

[Dr.3D]

Facebook should give him back his $300,000.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Same guy behind the Wall GoFundMe.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-n...ser-trump-s-border-wall-has-fake-news-n950636

In October, Right Wing News was pulled down by Facebook in a sweep of more than 559 pages that the company said were “using fake accounts… to drive traffic to their websites” or “were ad farms using Facebook to mislead people into thinking that they were forums for legitimate political debate.”

Days after the pulldown, Kolfage created a group called Fight4FreeSpeech, which accepts donations, and is also not referenced in the GoFundMe.

Kolfage told NBC News he didn’t want to mention Right Wing News or Fight4FreeSpeech because he “didn’t want it to be a distraction.”

“I don’t wanna mix the two. That shouldn’t be the focus. My personal issues have nothing to do with building the wall,” he said.

Kolfage also ran Right Wing News’ shuttered affiliate sites including VeteranAF and FreedomDaily, which pushed false conspiracy theories, like ones claiming Hillary Clinton was secretly hiding deadly illnesses and fake voter fraud stories days before the 2016 election.

Those sites stopped operating in March, replaced with a string of text that said “This Website Has Gone Out of Business.”

The shuttering of Kolfage’s sites came a month after Michigan man Joel Vangheluwe sued FreedomDaily and other right wing sites for misidentifying him as the driver of the car that plowed into a group of peaceful protestors at a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The FreedomDaily article relied on the image board 4chan as its major source, according to a letter provided to the court by the contributor named in the suit. Kolfage was not listed as a defendant.

The sites often trafficked in false, inflammatory and racist content, including headlines like “Obnoxious Black People Lose Their Minds When Victoria Secret Models Say This 1 Word On Live Video” and “Trump Just Released Embarrassing Vids Of Obama’s Muslim Friends That He Never Wanted Seen.”

FreedomDaily and VeteranAF frequently ran identical stories by users with different bylines. Several stories on FreedomDaily written by “Liberty Belle” also appear on “VeteranAF” under the byline “Lady Liberty.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/bri...gofundme-ran-facebook-conspiracy-page-2018-12

MailOnline said some headlines from another of Kolfage's sites, called FreedomDaily, included "Money-Grubbing Muslims Stole Over $16 MILLION From Needy Americans — Trump Has Perfect Punishment" and "Kaepernick Just Released His Own 'Bill of Rights' And Is Forcing Everyone In America To Follow It."

He had another GoFundMe for Veterans but the claimed charities said they never got any money from him. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...trump-wall-brian-kolfage-immigration-facebook

The veteran has tapped crowdfunding and his social media following to help raise money for a variety of issues and causes over the years, including his own legal fees against what he characterized as “radical left-wing extremists” who slandered him, according to 2014 court documents.

A year later, he used GoFundMe to collect $16,246 for a veteran mentorship program. The campaign closed in February 2015, and the funds went directly to Kolfage, Bobby Whithorne, a GoFundMe spokesperson, confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

In now-deleted Facebook posts, Kolfage appealed to followers to donate to “get vets back on track” and said his program worked in conjunction with military hospitals, such as Walter Reed, Brooke Army Medical Center, and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, which treated Kolfage in 2004 after the horrific explosion at Balad Air Base in Iraq that left him injured.

But representatives for all three medical centers told BuzzFeed News that they have no record of any peer-mentoring programs or Kolfage working with patients at their centers.

“We do not have a record of Mr. Kolfage visiting Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in any official capacity after 2012,” Gia E. Oney, chief of public affairs for Landstuhl, told BuzzFeed News. “We have no record of a donation made in his name to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.”

In addition to his build-the-wall campaign, Kolfage is still raising money on GoFundMe for his “Fight 4 Free Speech” initiative to “take on Facebook in an unprecedented legal case that will shape our nation for future generations.” It has raised more than $73,350 of its $100,000 goal in two months.

On several occasions, Kolfage discussed purchasing Facebook pages, which he acknowledged in one message is a violation of the social network’s policy and urged employees to remain quiet about. In a group text dated Sept. 22, 2017, he informed employees that “we purchased the Facebook pages belonging to Patriot Nation,” collecting its 2 million fans to “significantly increase our traffic” and generate more revenue.

About a year later, in March 2018, Kolfage texted an acquaintance, who shared their conversations with BuzzFeed News, bragging about how rapidly he had grown the Facebook page Right Wing News, which he had recently purchased.

“One day of big daddy running the show,” Kolfage wrote, referencing an attached chart showing a significant spike in user traffic. “Those fuckers had no clue...The page reach is actually 14 million this week. When I got it [it] was 1 mil.”

The veteran purchased the page, which frequently posted outlandish conservative "clickbait" stories, for more than $100,000, according to a former employee and a colleague.

“Brian is a genius. He knows how to manipulate people and the system,” the former employee said. “The stories were doing more harm than good. Hillary’s face would be on someone else’s body with handcuffs and the story had nothing to do with that. He would brag about how we would be even bigger and explode in 2018 because of the fake news stuff.”

He is in Florida but checks to his GoFundMe were being sent to a post office box in a strip mall in Colorado. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12...ed-business-associates-of-florida-fundraiser/

Scammer.

 

[osan]

First argument that will come up is Facebook is a Private Company. Lets see what RON PAUL himself has to say about that:

Depends on what the relevant agreements say. FB could be in breach, in which case disabled vet with terminally hot wife and beautiful kids may take them to the cleaners.

Other possibility is that disabled vet with terminally hot wife and beautiful kids failed to read the agreements carefully where some fine print clearly provided for FB's authority to do as they did, in which case disabled vet with terminally hot wife and beautiful kids is probably SOL.

Just because he is a disabled vet with terminally hot wife and beautiful kids, he doesn't get a pass on the latter, unless he is brain-damaged, in which case we have a real problem.

What I don't understand is why anyone would do business with FB. Firstly, they are scummy, lowlife trash so far as I am concerned. I'd not give them a penny. Secondly, they are not to be trusted to the end of one's nose. What possesses people... oh, yeah... ignorance and greed. Never mind.

 

[osan]

Same guy behind the Wall GoFundMe... Scammer.

Once again Juan shows he is either intellectually deficient, this time to a frightening depth, or is just being a dick.

The question of whether Kolfage is a scammer is irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that FB shut him off with no due process. FB are assholes... really big, sore-riddled, unwashed, abominably stinky sphincters not to be trusted for anything save that they will stick something large and unpleasant in your bootus-hole, given half a chance. Now, perhaps you like that kind of thing, which would go a long way toward explaining why you appear to be defending those douchebags.

 

[Stratovarious]

Alex Jones started pointing out some horribly negative aspects of
facebook about 10 or 12 years ago, I closed my account then and
have never looked back, then after about 12 years on youtube, I
was life banned with no reason nor violation sited.
They of course banned Alex Jones; deleting 100's of thousands of
his and supporting videos including extremely important interviews
with everyone from Ron Paul to Aaron Russo and William Binney,
it could easily be surmised that the banning of Jones from youtube
was deemed important by youtube management for the Binney
interviews alone.

 

[devil21]

Once again Juan shows he is either intellectually deficient, this time to a frightening depth, or is just being a dick.

The question of whether Kolfage is a scammer is irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that FB shut him off with no due process. FB are assholes... really big, sore-riddled, unwashed, abominably stinky sphincters not to be trusted for anything save that they will stick something large and unpleasant in your bootus-hole, given half a chance. Now, perhaps you like that kind of thing, which would go a long way toward explaining why you appear to be defending those douchebags.

You're right that the terms of service is what matters. However, whether he was using the FB platform to further other scams is pretty germane to the topic, I think. Was he advertising the "fundraisers" via his FB pages? I have no doubt their mile-long terms of service expressly forbids using the platform for furthering any criminal behavior. Attorneys can pick through the maze of legalese, I have no desire to, but if it's reasonably clear that his fake news operation and associated advertising expenses were in furtherance of scams/criminal behavior then FB would be within their right to tell him to pound sand without due process, if the contract terms don't otherwise require it. It is still a private company and private contract so no constitutional due process provisions apply in the slightest.

It's obvious to me that he's slimey, disabled vet or not. So is FB. They deserve to screw each other.

 

[osan]

You're right that the terms of service is what matters. However, whether he was using the FB platform to further other scams is pretty germane to the topic, I think. Was he advertising the "fundraisers" via his FB pages? I have no doubt their mile-long terms of service expressly forbids using the platform for furthering any criminal behavior. Attorneys can pick through the maze of legalese, I have no desire to, but if it's reasonably clear that his fake news operation and associated advertising expenses were in furtherance of scams/criminal behavior then FB would be within their right to tell him to pound sand without due process, if the contract terms don't otherwise require it. It is still a private company and private contract so no constitutional due process provisions apply in the slightest.

It's obvious to me that he's slimey, disabled vet or not. So is FB. They deserve to screw each other.

You could be correct, but so far as my scan indicates, there appears to be insufficient data in the article to draw a reliable conclusion.

The article is written in typically poor form, whether intentionally or otherwise, leaving readers to draw tacit inferences and even conclusions based on very fuzzy innuendo.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Once again Juan shows he is either intellectually deficient, this time to a frightening depth, or is just being a dick.

The question of whether Kolfage is a scammer is irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that FB shut him off with no due process. FB are $#@!s... really big, sore-riddled, unwashed, abominably stinky sphincters not to be trusted for anything save that they will stick something large and unpleasant in your bootus-hole, given half a chance. Now, perhaps you like that kind of thing, which would go a long way toward explaining why you appear to be defending those douchebags.

One of the linked articles quoted somebody working with him saying he (Kolfage) knowingly was violating Facebook rules.

On several occasions, Kolfage discussed purchasing Facebook pages, which he acknowledged in one message is a violation of the social network’s policy and urged employees to remain quiet about. In a group text dated Sept. 22, 2017, he informed employees that “we purchased the Facebook pages belonging to Patriot Nation,” collecting its 2 million fans to “significantly increase our traffic” and generate more revenue.

 

[osan]

One of the linked articles quoted somebody working with him saying he (Kolfage) knowingly was violating Facebook rules.

That is a fairly important bit of information. I'd think the author would have placed that directly in his work rather than abstracted by a layer. At best this is sloppy work.