Facebook, a.k.a. Meta, ushered in a quiet ‘purge’ of sorts on December 7th, ousting ostensibly hundreds – if not thousands – of various pages with obvious or subtle right-leaning slants or humor, as well as disabling all the accounts of admins and even some followers of such pages. While nothing official was announced by the platform itself, the chatter on lateral platforms like X (formerly Twitter) illustrates the validity of the seemingly covert effort by the platform.
In a manner akin to how In Quintum Novembris brings to mind the verse “remember, remember the 5th of November,” the date of December 7th will undoubtedly be a day of relevance to those who fell victim to what many are calling the silent purge of Facebook.
It seems as though Facebook pages with even an iota of conservative tinges in their content that bore somewhat modest followings in the thousands (and in some cases, tens of thousands) were upended simultaneously from the platform.
Just heard that Facebook executed a massive purge today terminating conservative accounts with extreme prejudice including personal accounts.
RUMINT suggests many will be moving to @elonmusk @X platform
The last bastion of free speech left…
— DANGER: DISINFORMATION (@RetiredCrimeDog) December 8, 2023
Many of the aforementioned upended Facebook pages were niche original content purveyors who catered to a myriad of tastes, with some being meme/comedic pages, ‘Doge’ pages, general comic panel pages, Christian & Catholic fan pages, and even bodybuilding pages. Furthermore, many of the pages in question harbored zero community guideline violations and some were even monetized by Facebook and were earning hundreds of dollars a month for being ‘advertiser friendly’ per Facebook’s monetization guidelines.
But with the afflicted pages largely being composed of follower counts in the thousands range, a fly-by-night operation upending them all wouldn’t exactly make a big splash in the broader spectrum of social media discourse. Hence, why the matter is all the more concerning; Big Tech is flexing a muscle to show they can memory hole fan communities in the hundreds and thousands and largely go unchecked.
And what makes the entire matter all the more nefarious was the backend effort to help make the purge go unnoticed, with Facebook outright disabling all the personal profiles of people serving as admins of these various pages and disabling various accounts who regularly interacted with some of these ousted pages – as in deleting personal profiles of those who may have regularly liked, shared, or commented positively on such pages.
You didn’t misread that: Facebook permanently disabled personal profiles of people who administered, or simply interacted with the content, of these arguably conservative-tinged pages. Again, these weren’t overtly political pages either but rather pages harboring comic panels, memes, pro-Catholic or Christian content, fitness advocacy, and a hodge-podge of other flavors of content.
Yet, Facebook (or someone with profile deletion capabilities at the company) executed a mass deletion of pages without any sort of explanation to those impacted aside from a notification reading “your account was disabled.”
today is a day that will go down in infamy pic.twitter.com/V0KipIPSNw
— Atomic Shaman Sweatlodge (@MotelAndRVPark) December 7, 2023
Despite Facebook’s best efforts to keep the purging of pages and personal profiles silent, indie news outlet Action4Liberty did report on the matter, highlighting the upending of North Star Liberty Alliance’s page on the platform as well their admin having their personal profile disabled.
“William Beck helps manage the social media pages for NSLA and alerted us this week to the page being completed removed from the platform, without any explanation. Facebook then removed William’s account (who also helps manage Action 4 Liberty’s social media) and the accounts of the other members who help manage NSLA.” – via Action4Liberty.com
While only a theory, it is likely that Facebook specifically targeted right-leaning content creators on the platform who, while on the smaller scale, produced original content that would at times go semi-viral and serve as a conversation starter around particular social/political topics.
In fact, even The Breakdown News was impacted by this very event, with the admin of the outlet’s official Facebook page having their account disabled on December 7th without any explanation delivered, thus, rendering the Facebook page of The Breakdown News inaccessible for further posts or updates.
Needless to say, election season is right around the corner, and the last thing certain folks at Facebook would want is a bevy of effective content creators and personalities utilizing persuasive entertainment methods to shed a flattering light on conservative-leaning principles.
Gregory Hoyt is a former contributor to outlets such as Law Enforcement Today and Red Voice Media, and current host of The Breakdown with Greg Hoyt. Based out of Sierra Vista, Arizona, Hoyt is a staunch and outspoken advocate of law enforcement and first responders, while also harboring the unique experience of having spent nearly 5 years in prison. Since then, he's used his unique perspective to offer support and commentary about the criminal justice system. When not working or combating bad ideas, Hoyt also leisurely studies economics, history, and law.
I had a feeling my page was going to get unpublished a month ago, when I noticed reach was much lower and was prevented from gaining past 12k followers. There was a time my posts reached millions. I had page growth of 1,000 followers a week during my peak. This is unfortunate as my page was a vector for Published Authors to find out about my podcast and make an appearance to promote their books.
Sincerely, Klaus Neuhaus -Atomic Shaman Sweatlodge
Some other pages, like those for businesses that do not demonstrate a political leaning, also had their accounts disabled. My understanding is that Meta also fired a large amount of employees in favor or AIs to monitor content recently.
I’m still in the belief that is was AI-controlled moderation gone wrong, and Meta is still cleaning up and identifying the fault before they bother to say anything at all, as I know some pages who were previously disabled are allowing access back to to their accounts with no explanation at all.
I appreciate the article, thanks for covering the issue!
It should be pretty obvious at this point that not only have any even remotely right wing opinions been agressively censored since 2016, but that the driving force behind this has been a small ethno-religious minority group of “chosen people.”
My personal account as well as my 14k follower 12 year old page (drunkontacos) got taken down. I was showing no strikes against my page, and had been offered to monetize it about a month ago. Lots of my fellow page admins have since moved to Twitter, as have I (@drunkontacos).
No explanation was given, nor was an email received, nor have I been given any opportunity to appeal the process.
My page got nuked, despite never breaking the rules or engaging in anything malicious. Fb won’t even let me appeal
Got the nuke here as well, with zero warning or buildup. I didn’t even have a reach kill like some were mentioning, I just went to bed one night, anticipating responding in a discussion I was participating in, and the next morning I had no access. I’m over rebuilding on X now, but the community we were all part of is truly irreplaceable.
No matter you political leaning, everyone should have the right to freedom of speech, (it may come as a surprise, freedom of speech was not invented by the Americans ) but it is universally sought after and many countries do not have this freedom, then to see a a US, owned company abuse this for their own political gain is extremely disturbing, and so I believe Facebook should face criminal charges, by the very constitution that they profess, to serve,
My page was “I post otenba and anime midriff to make my life a little less trash”. I literally used to go out of my way to not post or discuss politics on my page, it was at its core just an anime pictures page. However, because I regularly interacted with non-radical left pages, I got summarily zucced too. Not returning to Facebook again, if Zucc wants a radical left echo chamber, he’ll get his echo chamber.