Facebook sent an apology to a homeschool mother who made a post condemning homosexuality after it suspended the Christian video blogger’s account for content that was not LGBT-friendly.
The Left-leaning social media giant claimed that it made an “error” by banning Elizabeth Johnston from accessing her account. Facebook froze the public Facebook page of the Ohio mother of 10 who runs a popular blog called “The Activist Mommy,” which is the name of her Facebook account.
“A member of our team accidently removed something you posted on Facebook,” read Facebook’s warning notified Johnston after a public outcry was made on her behalf, according to The Christian Post (CP). “This was a mistake, and we sincerely apologize for this error. We’ve since restored the content, and you should now be able to see it.”
Censoring Christianity to advocate homosexuality?
The Christian homeschool mom was targeted by Facebook for addressing homosexuality using Scripture from the Bible.
“’The Activist Mommy’ Facebook account was frozen on Feb. 9 because of a comment Johnston posted over six months ago that cited passages from the New Testament and Old Testament, including how Leviticus states that homosexuality is a ‘detestable’ sin and an ‘abomination,’” CP’s Samuel Smith reported. “The comment, which included no name-calling, was simply Johnston’s commentary in response to another Facebook user, who had commented on one of Johnston’s videos and argued that Christians are hypocrites for condemning homosexuality.”
Johnston was first notified by Facebook about her “violation” via a message regarding her post addressing the topic of homosexual behavior.
“[The post in question was removed because] it doesn’t follow the Facebook Community Standards,” Facebook informed her before her account was frozen for three days.
Keeping her Facebook “friends” apprised of the situation, the Christian blogger let them know why there was an interruption in her posts.
“After she regained access to her account on Feb. 12, Johnston published a post explaining to her followers that her Facebook account had been frozen,” Smith recounted. “The post included a screengrab of her original Bible commentary and the message that she received from Facebook. She concluded the post with the hashtag #FacebookCensorsBible.”
Facebook was then quick to delete Johnston’s Feb. 12 post, and followed up by freezing her account for another seven days.
It was not until the homeschool mom’s story was covered by the news media internationally that Facebook changed course and issued an apology for its censorship of her Christian beliefs. A Facebook spokesperson informed CP on Thursday that it had errantly deleted her post and suspended her account, assuring that everything had been fully restored.
“The post was removed in error and we restored it as soon as we were able to investigate,” the Facebook spokesperson assured in an email. “Our team processes millions of reports each week and we sometimes get things wrong. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
Exposing Facebook’s cover-up
Johnston accused Facebook of pretending to make a mistake – one that censored material that was not LGBT-friendly.
“Saying this was an accident is a joke!” the Christian mom exclaimed, according to CP. “They sent me the post and said it specifically violated their community guidelines. Now they are saying they accidentally stated that and banned me for 10 days accidentally? No! It took a national news story to get my content returned to my page. What about the average Facebook user who doesn’t have that luxury? I am on a mission now to speak for them. I am receiving messages, screenshots and evidence from all over the world which proves that Facebook’s system for filtering and banning is punitive against conservatives and Christians.”
Johnston then questioned Facebook’s reasoning for shutting her down.
“If Facebook needed time to review the post that someone complained about, then why didn’t they simply delete my comment until they had time to review it?” she asked. “Why did they punish me with a 10-day ban? This is damage control because my story hit mainstream media.”
The devout Christian is continuing to keep Facebook in check.
“Johnston is not letting up on her claims that Facebook is censoring her account,” Smith informed. “Johnston started a thread on her Facebook page asking her over 78,000 followers to submit any information on how her page is being censored by Facebook.”
It was subsequently divulged that Facebook made other attempts to silence Johnston’s free speech.
“One person told me my videos had no ‘share’ buttons on them while everyone else’s do,” Johnston indicated. “Another woman just told me nothing happens when she clicks or shares my posts, while she can share other people’s posts.”
This account was corroborated by one of Johnston’s Facebook fans.
“I had your page ‘liked’ before, but I just went to it and it wasn’t ‘liked,’ so I re-liked it,” Johnston’s follower explained to her.
A similar experience was reported by another Facebook user.
“No idea what happened yesterday,” David Dlugosinski informed her. “I shared your original post on Tuesday, but it (and ONLY it) disappeared on Wednesday. After commenting on the disappearance in several places and re-sharing your post, the original ‘share’ re-appeared [sic]. It was definitely gone for a few hours. I looked for it on my timeline for several minutes before re-sharing it.”
Oliver Witherspoon also witnessed censorship firsthand.
“Yesterday, I posted a comment about Christianity and the sin of homosexuality on your page, and now it’s gone,” the concerned Facebook user told Johnston.
Even though she does not agree with it, the homeschool mom acknowledges that as a private company, Facebook is under no obligation to guarantee free speech on its social media pages – even though it claims to honor the First Amendment.
“But here is where Americans are crying foul: Zuckerberg is saying Facebook is unbiased, but in reality, it appears he is using the platform to further his personal political, religious and globalist agenda,” Johnston contended. “He is using Facebook as an ideological weapon and punishing those of us who don’t submit to the agenda with suspensions and deletions of our pages.”
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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
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