After facing intense scrutiny, Facebook reversed course, reinstating an account associated with the conservative book publisher Heroes of Liberty.
As CBN News previously reported, Facebook disabled ads from the children’s publisher offering biographical books about former President Ronald Reagan, economist Thomas Sowell, and Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The platform claimed Heroes of Liberty violated the site’s rules against “Low Quality or Disruptive Content.”
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When the publisher reached out to Facebook to appeal the decision, the social media platform indicated the ruling, which went into effect Dec. 23, was permanent:
After a final review of this ad account, we confirmed it didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards. You can no longer advertise with this ad account and its ads and assets will remain disabled. This is our final decision.
Heroes of Liberty editor Bethany Mandel noted the publishing house, which launched in mid-November, began investing in Facebook marketing four months prior.
“We invested most of our marketing budget on the platform, and now our budget (the money we’ve already spent), as well as our assets and data are gone,” she said. “Marketing-wise, we are back in square one, financially it’s even more challenging.”
Mandel took to her Twitter account to describe the decision by Facebook as “devastating.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Fox News analyst Brit Hume condemned the move:
When conservatives start independent publishing outlets and platforms, #BigTech companies like Facebook now work to destroy them. This latest example is particularly galling. https://t.co/EkT41avNII
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 3, 2022
Hume called the move “sickening” and asserted Facebook’s reasoning was illegitimate.
About an hour after Hume posted his tweet, Andy Stone, the policy communications director for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, replied, claiming the ban on Heroes of Liberty was a mistake.
“This should not have happened,” he wrote. “It was an error and the ad account’s been restored.”
As for the initial judgment about the ads, Mandel told MRCTV she never received any explanation from Facebook as to how the Heroes of Liberty promos were ever in violation of the platform’s policies.
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