Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced this week that it plans to end its fact-checking program, citing problems with mistakes and censorship. In response, pro-life legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) sent a letter to Meta, urging the social media corporation to practice what it preaches and restore pro-life accounts that were disabled despite appeals, and have not been restored.
The letter, written by ADF counsel Philip Shechler and Timothy Chandler, involved their clients: LifeNews, LifeNews founder and editor Steven Ertelt, and Abby Covington (a pro-life mother seeking to adopt a child). Meta removed all three accounts after they published pro-life content that they contend did not violate any of Meta’s Community Standards.
LifeNews and Steven Ertelt
Ertelt frequently published content from the LifeNews Facebook account to his personal Facebook account, and the LifeNews Instagram page was linked to Ertelt’s personal Facebook account.
Ertelt was locked out of LifeNews’ and his personal accounts after sharing pro-life content. The letter states that after Ertelt posted a short video of a C-section in which the child in the womb grasped the surgeon’s finger, his account was suspended. Meta alleged that his content had violated the platform’s standards on “child sexual exploitation“:
Later that day… when Mr. Ertelt attempted to access his Facebook account, he was notified that his account had been suspended. Without explanation, Facebook stated that his account did not “follow our Community Standards on child sexual exploitation.” … This was a shock to Mr. Ertelt—as a pro-life advocate, he has only ever sought to protect children, and he had never shared sexual content through any of his accounts. … []Facebook only allowed Mr. Ertelt to click “Appeal” without any opportunity to explain his objection to Facebook’s decision.
Four months later, having received no news as to his appeal, he attempted to log into his accounts and found they had been permanently disabled. The letter notes:
LifeNews used Mr. Ertelt’s Facebook account to create the LifeNews Instagram account. Thus, by permanently suspending Mr. Ertelt’s Facebook account, Facebook also permanently suspended LifeNews’s Instagram account.
Now, none of LifeNews’s 20,000 plus Instagram followers or Mr. Ertelt’s 5,000 Facebook friends are able to access any of the content posted on these accounts, and LifeNews and Mr. Ertelt are permanently barred from ever posting on them again.
“Facebook’s censorship of my account and our Instagram account is absurd,” Ertelt said. “Calling a medical video demonstrating the humanity of unborn children ‘child sexual exploitation’ is grossly inaccurate and offensive to the millions of pro-life people who use Facebook and Instagram. Instead of going after a pro-life video and disabling our accounts, it should crack down on actual child sexual exploitation.”
Abby Covington
Covington’s account was banned after she made a post introducing herself and her family, stating that any pregnant mothers seeking an adoptive family for their children could reach out to her. Because her post had espoused pro-life, pro-homeschooling, Christian beliefs, someone apparently shared Covington’s post to a private group, and Covington began receiving multiple hate-filled comments, leading her to delete the post. The letter notes:
Three days later, Mrs. Covington awoke to a barrage of hateful messages sent to her through Facebook Messenger and numerous hateful comments on her adoption post. One user commented, “I’m adopted and I’d s[$%]t in your mouth out of spite while you were asleep if I’d been raised that way.” Another commented, “[w]ouldn’t you be able to have kids if gawd wanted you to?”
In the comments, users also tagged (in other words, provided hyperlinks to) two Facebook groups named: “The cult with the sky daddy kink is at it again” and “I’ll dedicate my next abortion to you.”
Through Facebook analytics, Mrs. Covington learned that her post had been seen by over 21,000 users and was shared in a private group—likely one of the groups tagged—that she could not access. To deter further harassment, Mrs. Covington deleted her post from Facebook that day, November 19.
Despite this, Meta still disabled her entire Facebook account, claiming that her post had violated “Community Standards on human exploitation“:
Two days later, when Mrs. Covington attempted to log into Facebook, it notified her that her account had been suspended.
Incredibly, Facebook stated that her account did not “follow our Community Standards on human exploitation.” …
This was a surprise to Mrs. Covington, since all of her accounts were wholesome and family-friendly, and she had never posted content that would implicate such a serious concern as human exploitation.
…[] Facebook only allowed Mrs. Covington to click “Appeal” without any opportunity to explain her objection to Facebook’s decision—the same treatment that LifeNews and Mr. Ertelt experienced.
ADF’s appeal to Meta
In a video explaining the decision to eliminate the fact-checking program, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg said too many mistakes and too much censorship had taken place, causing Meta users to distrust its various platforms.
“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” Zuckerberg said. “So over the next couple of months, we’re going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system. Second, we’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”
ADF is now urging Meta to restore these accounts if they truly want to make a stand against censorship.
“Although Meta recently restated its commitment to upholding free speech on its platforms, it has a long way to go to prove that it will actually make good on its promises,” ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler, director of the ADF Center for Free Speech, said in the press release. “Steven Ertelt, Abby Covington, and LifeNews all used their social media in family-friendly and life-affirming ways. But the social media giant silenced them for reasons that are patently absurd. Until Facebook restores these accounts, its statements on free speech ring hollow.”
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