Meta Backtracks And Blames System

‘Bug’ After Nuking AFPI Instagram Over

‘Fraud’
JANUARY 15, 2024

America First Policy Institute’s Instagram page was ‘permanently

suspended’ after highlighting Biden family malfeasance.
America First Policy Institute’s Instagram page was reportedly “permanently suspended” and
“scheduled for deletion” by Meta on Wednesday, Jan. 10, shortly after the organization used the
platform to highlight Hunter Biden’s disregard for a congressional subpoena.

AFPI’s account was initially flagged and suspended for violating “Community Guidelines on fraud
and deception.” The offending content was assumedly the post about Hunter Biden, made prior to
his surprise appearance before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

The post contained objectively true statements about Hunter Biden’s defiance of House
Republicans’ subpoena, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon’s convictions for ignoring similar
subpoenas issued by congressional Democrats, and the Justice Department’s interference in the
IRS’s investigation into Hunter’s international business dealings. There was nothing fraudulent or
deceptive about it.
This post was made at 8:21 a.m, and AFPI says Meta informed the organization of its account’s
suspension at 8:49 a.m. AFPI said, however, “No communications ever mentioned what piece of
content triggered this flag.”
Just minutes after AFPI appealed the account’s suspension, the organization says it received
notice from Meta via email about the completion of an automated account review and “that [the]
account has been deemed to violate fraud and deception standards, and [was] permanently
suspended and is scheduled for deletion.” AFPI says its account received a “web notice where
careful note is given to indicate this is a FINAL decision and further review is impossible.”

Shortly after AFPI CEO Brooke Rollins shared news of what had happened, online outrage and
demands for accountability ensued. Legislators, conservative activists, and even presidential
candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sounded the alarm, decrying the page’s suspension as an un-
American suppression of speech and an attempt by Big Tech to interfere in the 2024 election.

Later that afternoon, AFPI says it was informed by Meta that access to its Instagram account was
restored and that the page’s content had not violated “fraud and deception” standards. AFPI
leadership said that a Meta representative further relayed to the group that a “bug in the system”
had set the whole ordeal in motion.

But where some see bugs, others see features.

After all, there’s a chance an error actually did occur. Without seeing Instagram’s back end prior
to any hypothetical remedy being administered, the only recourse, generally speaking, is to take
Meta at its word. But as Rollins said, “The bugs in the system always seem to affect people on our
side of the aisle.”

Neither Instagram nor Meta responded to requests for comment on the nature of this “bug.”

It just so happens a bug in Instagram’s system happened to flag a prominent conservative

organization for “fraud and deception” after it highlighted the Biden family’s corruption and the
federal government’s likely role in covering it up. When was the last time a left-wing think tank
was flagged for spreading “fraud and deception” after regurgitating Russia-collusion hoax
agitprop or reminding people to stand six feet apart to “stop the spread”? Never. The “bugs” only
go one way.

Big Tech, being ontologically leftist, protects and emboldens Democrat politicians. This isn’t new,
and obviously, Meta is no exception. The company has helped the Democrat establishment and
permanent Washington prop up the Bidens time and time again.

Meta’s Facebook colluded with the FBI to suppress circulation of the Hunter Biden laptop story
ahead of the 2020 election and heeded the Biden administration’s call for a Covid censorship
program targeting “Covid and vaccine misinformation” and “humorous or satirical content that
suggests the vaccine isn’t safe.”

One need look no further than Murthy v. Missouri (formerly known as Missouri v. Biden) to see
the systemic left-wing bias of Big Tech and the shameless impunity with which the government
routinely directs it to violate Americans’ free-speech rights.

In a July 2021 editorial for The Wall Street Journal discussing a class-action lawsuit filed with
AFPI against Google, former President Donald Trump made the case that Democrat
weaponization of Big Tech presents an existential threat to American democracy.

Trump said, “Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls,
newspapers and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public
square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and
shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media
— banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of
information on which our democracy depends.”

For entirely too long, the American right bought into the myth of institutional political neutrality,
believing that, among other falsehoods, the actions of specific entities were siloed within
themselves and did not have spillover effects.

Big Tech is not just a conglomerate of software companies; it’s an immensely powerful political
entity comprised of unaccountable individuals with vast sums of wealth and more information
than all of the world’s intelligence agencies combined. It is overwhelmingly manned by rabidly
secular, leftist ideologues with no national loyalty or fealty toward the religious or cultural
identity of this nation. Because of its ability to control the flow of information, dictating the terms
of how we participate in discourse and access news, it controls how the masses think and perceive
reality. And it hates you.

But sure, there was a bug in the code of a system with more than 2 billion users, resulting in the
ban of an activist page highlighting the vulnerability of an incumbent president upon whom this
same monolith is dependent for survival.
This mask has been lifted, and people are now aware of the stakes. We’re through the looking
glass here, people.