Facebook Threatens To Ban Most Popular Pro-Trump Page Just 3 Days Before Midterms
Tom Pappert
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Facebook sent an email to the admin of ‘Donald Trump Is Our President’ and ‘Hillary Clinton for Prison’ informing him his pages and personal Facebook account “are at risk of being removed.”
On Saturday afternoon, the husband and wife team behind the immensely popular ‘Donald Trump Is Our President’ and ‘Hillary Clinton for Prison’ Facebook pages received an email from Facebook explaining that their presence on the Big Tech platform is at risk of being removed for violating Facebook’s Community Guidelines against users who use multiple accounts, and its policies against what company calls “ad farms,” or ad laden websites that feign to be political to sell advertising. Facebook previously used this explanation after they deleted 800 political accounts and pages.
Mark Sidney, who runs the massive pages with his wife, claims that he never violated any of these rules. First, Sidney attempted to communicate with Facebook by replying to the email, only to receive an automated reply notifying him that the inbox was not monitored. Next, Sidney took to his page ‘Donald Trump Is Our President’ to tell his story. His page boasts nearly 3.2 million likes, and Sidney claims it has the second highest engagement for a pro-Trump Facebook page next to President Donald Trump’s own.
Speaking to Big League Politics via phone, Sidney explained that he only has one Facebook account, and that his identity was confirmed by Facebook after the 2016 election because of the size of his page. Sidney further explained that he first posts articles from his website, FB News Cycle, to a Facebook group he created and tied to his page. Then, if the post is popular in his group, Sidney shares the article to his page. He does not know if Facebook considers this spam, and has stopped the practice until he can hear back from Facebook.
Sidney also lamented that he is being forced to self censor just three days before the 2018 Midterm Elections, which he considers crucial for Republicans to win. Not knowing if this type of sharing is now considered a violation of Facebook’s Community Standards, Sidney says he has stopped posting links to his website on the page.
“My plan is to not post links to my website, which is killing me,” Sidney said, “Three days before the election, this is crunch time. Now I’m going to be self censoring.”
In a simultaneous effort to prevent Facebook from removing his pages from the platform, Sidney also temporarily unpublished ‘Hillary for Prison,’ which has over 1.3 million likes, until he is able to hear back from Facebook and understand how he can become compliant. He does not know if the page will be republished before the November 6 elections.
“I’m trying to be completely above board. I understand that people are worried about the integrity of the election,” Sidney told us, referring to fears among the left that Facebook was used by foreign entities to influence the 2016 presidential election, “I just need to know where the goal posts are, that’s all.”
It is worth noting that this threat of censorship from Facebook comes just one day after an FEC complaint was filed against Facebook by Americans for Legal Immigration PAC. The complaint accuses Facebook, Google, and Twitter of violating election law by selectively banning or otherwise censoring conservatives while allowing leftist voices to thrive.
Big League Politics has detailed several recent examples of censorship on the Big Tech platform, including Laura Loomer’s permanent Facebook ban, the ban of ‘Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children’, the rejection of pro-life advertisements, the censorship of #WalkAway founder Brandon Straka, and the actions the platform has taken against the Facebook page ‘God Emperor Trump’.
Update: After this article was published, Facebook contacted Sidney and expanded on their initial email.
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