Facebook deletes posts quoting former Prime Minister John Howard

SOCIAL media giant Facebook is being criticised for deleting a post which quoted former Prime Minister John Howard’s comments on political correctness in a Daily Telegraph article.

2 min read

August 14, 2018 - 12:23PM

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FACEBOOK is being accused of “censoring” John Howard after the social network deleted a post from an account quoting the former Prime Minister.

The Australian Family Coalition posted a Daily Telegraph story to its Facebook page on August 8 and provided no comment other than quotes from Mr Howard in which he condemned the Australian Defence Force’s push to ban words such as “him” and “her”.

LISTEN TO DAMIAN WYLD ON MIRANDA LIVE:

AFC Director Damian Wyld told Miranda Live that they “boosted” the post with Facebook’s approval, but an hour later it had disappeared from the site.

Screenshot of Facebook’s approval of the boosted post. Picture: Australian Family Coalition

“It just spontaneously vanished,” Mr Wyld said.

“Facebook suggesting it’s impartial is something that needs to be revised and re-visited”.

Screenshot of the vanished Facebook link. Picture: Australian Family Coalition

“There’s also the question of how their algorithms work, whether they have the ability to sit down and look at every single post that a user puts up.”

Australian Family Coalition Director Damian Wyld.

Mr Wyld told Miranda Live host Miranda Devine he believes the social media network monitors “key phrases and trigger words” in order to disable posts.

He said the AFC hasn’t been able to reach Facebook and find out why the post was red-flagged.

“We sent them a please explain and nearly a week later we’ve heard nothing from them.”

You can find the invalid link here.

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