Facebook (Meta) Censors Thousands of Mainers After SCOTUS Green Lights Feds to Coerce Social Media

Facebook, the flagship social media site of Meta Platforms, Inc., deleted thousands of social media posts from users in Maine on Friday night.

Almost all of the posts included links to content from the Maine Wire; however, some right-leaning Facebook pages and groups that featured commentary on Maine politics were also negatively impacted.

The move followed on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the State of Missouri, among others, lacked standing to sue the federal government for pressuring social media companies to censor Americans’ speech online.

During the 2020 election and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government leaned on social media platforms to censor speech that would be politically unfavorable to then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The Feds also applied pressure to have criticisms of federal COVID-19 policies censored or removed.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt had initially been successful in obtaining a July 4, 2023 preliminary injunction, ordered by Judge Terry A. Doughty, which prohibited the Biden Administration and several federal agencies from contacting social media companies to have content censored or removed except in cases of illegal activity.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later limited the injunction to only prohibit the federal government and the Biden Administration from coercing or threatening social media companies. The court had found evidence that such behavior had occurred in violation of the First Amendment.

The 6-3 Supreme Court decision, authored by Justice Amy C. Barrett, did not rule on the substance of Schmitt’s allegations or the Fifth Circuit’s findings that First Amendment violations did, in fact, occur. Instead, the Court found that Schmitt and the other plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case because they had not personally been injured by the First Amendment violations.

The Supreme Court’s ruling had the effect of lifting the injunction against the Biden administration and the federal agencies involved, once again allowing them to pressure, threaten, and coerce social media companies into removing content that amounted to legal speech.

Facebook’s broad censorship campaign removed more than 3,000 posts made by social media users, including users living outside of Maine, who had linked to Maine Wire articles, including elected officials posting their own op-eds.

The mass takedown began just 24 hours after President Joe Biden gave a debate performance that was widely regarded as disastrous for his re-election campaign.

The Maine Wire’s Facebook page had primarily been sharing videos of the Commander-in-Chief debating former Republican President Donald Trump in the hours before the censorship campaign began.

However, the nature of the posts that were removed were broad and varied, and not all of them political or authored by Maine Wire reporters.

According to a review of hundreds of complaints sent to the Maine Wire about the censorship campaign, the posts Facebook targeted have no theme or commonality other than having links to TheMaineWire.com.

Facebook removed a May 2023 story about the Stand by to Fly practical shooting event in Hampden, which raised $75,000 for the Travis Mills Foundation.

Rep. Regan Paul (R-Winterport) shared screenshots showing that her more recent op-ed about offshore wind in Maine — a project that will directly impact her constituents — was removed from her personal page. In this instance, an elected officials own speech concerning a major political topic was removed from her personal page.

The censored stories also include dozens of investigative reports on illegal Chinese marijuana sites throughout Maine.

For example, Facebook deleted all links to an investigative report that showed Gov. Janet Mills’ brother, Paul Mills, helped Chinese drug traffickers transfer ownership of an illicit marijuana cultivation site in Corinna to a Chinese national living in Guangdong Province, China.

Facebook even took down a guest column about the New England Patriots.

In messages to effected users, Facebook did not claim that the censorship campaign had any thing to do with politics, elections, or “fact checking.”

Instead, the company told users — falsely — that sharing Maine Wire links amounted to a cyber security violation and an effort, by users, to collect information on other users.

The Maine Wire has made several attempts to contact Meta to ask why the company is lying to its users, censoring content based on those lies, and whether the timing of the censorship campaign was brought about at the behest of the Biden Administration, a federal agency, or some other political entity.

The company has not responded.

Although some users have reported trouble trying to follow or re-follow the Maine Wire’s Facebook page, which had more than 17,000 users prior to the censorship campaign, last week was the 3rd best week for overall follower growth.

However, the number of Facebook users “reached” by Maine Wire content has been suppressed far below historic averages and the backend of the platform remained glitchy and virtually unusable throughout the weekend.

Facebook has a long history of partnering with left-wing governments to censor politically motivated speech. In Germany, criticisms of the country’s immigration policies are regularly removed from the site. In Pakistan, the company will limit speech offensive to Muslims.

Maine Wire Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson issued the following comment in response to Facebook’s targeted censorship campaign:

“Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard person.”

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