Another Unfortunate Example Of Facebook Silencing Important Videos

from the where's-the-line dept

Another day, another case of Facebook disappearing a video that it should have left up. A politician in Hong Kong says that Facebook banned him from the site for 24 hours for a "terms of service violation" after he posted a video of him confronting men who had been following him around for weeks.

The video uploaded by Leung on August 7 showed him approaching a black car which he claimed followed him for a month. When Leung asked the two men inside the car where they came from, they replied “grandpa” – a slang term used for the Chinese Communist Party.

“I don’t want to know about you. Someone wants to know about you – I don’t want to know,” said one of the men in the car.

That seems like a valuable and important video in the public interest. But Facebook didn't think so:

Leung was informed on Tuesday night that his original video was removed for not complying with Facebook’s community standards. Shortly after, he uploaded it again and was banned from posting for 24 hours after the new post also got reported

Of course, once the story started getting press attention, suddenly Facebook restored the video. Funny how that works.

Either way, though, it's yet another reminder of how much power some of these platforms have over important speech, and how they become centralized attack vectors for those who wish to hide such information.

Filed Under: censorship, edward leung, free speech, hong kong
Companies: facebook