Facebook has censored a cover of the British magazine The Spectator. Fraser Nelson, the editor of the weekly, has explained in an article the circumstances of the censorship by Mark Zuckerberg's social network.
Facebook refused to publish this week's cover satirising Joe Biden when we submitted it as an advert. The cover asked if Biden would serve for six more years, but the illustration had him holding up five fingers. A nice joke, but hardly a cruel one. So we appealed.
This is not the first time that The Spectator has used humor to deal with political news:
Over the years we have shown Boris Johnson crashing into the ground with his head splat on the pavement. We have shown Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng in a motorcycle crash, their bodies in mangled metal. We've mocked Theresa May as a 'Maybot' putting her in all kinds of positions of torture for weeks. And Donald J. Trump? We've had him as a gun-toting psychopath and a pitchfork-wielding loon, goose-stepping in synchronization with Marine le Pen. All published by Facebook without a problem. But a gentle teasing of Joe Biden and all of a sudden we don't comply with its 'advertising policies'.
A Kafkaesque process
The magazine asked Facebook for a review of the case but was refused. It did so again, and the social network sent The Spectator a message stating: "You asked for another review of your rejected ads. After another review, it's been determined that they still don't comply with our Advertising Policies."
Fraser Nelson comments:
This is something I now encounter daily: a Kafkaesque process of rejection, lack of explanation, and algorithm editing which has far more influence over what we read than is generally acknowledged. Facebook, like most social media giants, does not feel the need to respond to people asking why their content has been targeted. There is no hotline to call, no account manager to complain to.
And the matter is of the utmost importance, given that in his opinion
Facebook is now the no.1 source of UK news after the broadcasters, its bots deciding which news posts are promoted and which ones are concealed. Whoever programs the bots wields more power than any of the great media barons: Hearst, Beaverbrook, or Murdoch.
Fleeting and ineffective intervention by Alex Belardinelli
At that impasse, Fraser Nelson tweeted about the Facebook censorship case, and the issue gained increasing interest in the British press. A journalist from The Sun newspaper called him and informed him that Facebook had rejected the cover because it had not been uploaded by someone authorized.
But it seems somewhat contradictory since the media are exempt from such procedures. And The Spectator is a well-known medium: The weekly, which has been published in Great Britain since 1828, has a circulation of about 100,000.
As the issue was gaining a great deal of press interest, Nelson was contacted by Alex Belardinelli, Director of Communications for Northern Europe. Belardinelli reacted by thanking him for drawing attention to the matter as if it were an unintentional mistake. And invited him to reapply for publication:
Hi Fraser - thanks for flagging this. As you know, anyone who wants to run an ad that's about politics or elections has to be authorized - per our process here https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/help/208949576550051?id=288762101909005. If The Spectator resubmit it from an authorised Page admin the ad will be approved.
Hi Fraser - thanks for flagging this. As you know, anyone who wants to run an ad that's about politics or elections has to be authorized - per our process here https://t.co/NCFKADmYUX. If The Spectator resubmit it from an authorized Page admin the ad will be approved.
- Alex Belardinelli (@abelardinelli) January 5, 2023
Nelson is surprised, because the reason that Facebook had alleged had to do with the publication itself, not with the person authorized to request its publication. But after this invitation, the magazine repeated the operation. But it was again rejected, without further explanation.
