Facebook Admits it Shadow-Banned Trump's Historic Photo after Assassination Attempt
Facebook has admitted temporarily shadow-banned the historic photo of former President Donald Trump pumping his fist following the attempt on his life at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th.
The iconic image, which Time Magazine refused to use for its cover, was censored in “error,” according to a company spokesman asked by the New York Post.
Conservative social media account End Wokeness noted that the company threatened to suspend another user after sharing the image, which was purported to be “misinformation.”
A spokesman for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, Dani Lever, called that decision a “mistake.”
“Yes, this was an error,” Lever wrote in response to a message from Charlie Kirk who had also blasted the social media network for disallowing sharing of the photo.
“This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo.” Lever added, “This has been fixed, and we apologize for the mistake.”
UPDATE: This has been resolved. A “false positive.” https://t.co/JRfmJiiqWx
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 29, 2024
However, users reacted angrily to r the apology, noting that Facebook was once again censoring conservatives and MAGA.
“Nope, not buying it anymore,” one user on X said.
“Funny that the ‘errors’ only ever go in one direction. Just coincidence, I guess,” wrote another.
The news comes after Meta faced anti-conservative controversy following reports its new AI chatbot referred to the Trump shooting as “fictional” when being asked to describe the incident.
Surprising, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted that watching Trump pump his fist in that photo was one of the most “badass” moves he’s ever seen.
But regardless of Zuckerberg’s remarks, his social media company still continues to censor Conservatives.
In 2021, a series of Wall Street Journal investigations found that Meta algorithms have for years promoted content that generated angry comments, generating activity but worsening the overall experience for users.
This year, a Federal judge ruled that the Biden administration unlawfully pressured Facebook a s to censor Conservative views and alternative narratives to the pandemic, suppressing information on alternative therapies to vaccines and masks.
The judge ruled that the White House had overstepped its boundaries and limited the First Amendment freedoms of conservatives.
The decision stemmed from lawsuits filed by Republican attorneys general who claimed federal officials overstepped their authority by pressuring Twitter and Facebook to shut down accounts questioning the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines during the height of the pandemic.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that order, siding with the Biden administration that it followed proper procedures in ordering Facebook to limit the spread of posts.
“The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, the Daily Caller reported.
“But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms.”
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