IMAGE: Catholic News Service
By Josephine von Dohlen
WASHINGTON
(CNS) — Catholic Facebook pages whose sponsors reported had been suddenly
removed late July 17 were restored just over 24 hours later.
Twenty-one
Brazilian-based Catholic Facebook pages, such as a Papa Francisco Brazil page,
as well as four English sites, could not publish content July 18 due to Facebook
silently taking down their sites. Millions of followers were affected,
according to ChurchPOP, a Christian Culture brand website.
Catholic
News Service contacted Facebook July 19 and received a response that it is
looking into the situation of each of the pages whose sponsors reported had
been shut down.
Among
those with pages who were affected was the executive director of
Relevant Radio, Father Francis J. Hoffman, affectionately known as “Father
Rocky,” who has 3.95 million likes from Facebook fans around the world.
Relevant
Radio reported that on July 17, all the page administrators of the Relevant
Radio “Father Rocky” Facebook page found themselves unable to log onto
Facebook. Once passing through a security measure, they found the Father Rocky
page left “unpublished, with no other details or explanation.”
Father
Rocky livestreams Mass daily from his Facebook page, as well as posts prayers,
photos and even educational videos for his almost 4 million followers. Early
July 19, Father Rocky posted a picture of a statue of Mary, stating, “Thanks be
to God, I am back on Facebook!!”
“This
serves as a wake-up call and we urge all Relevant Radio listeners and Facebook
followers to download the free Relevant Radio App as a secure and reliable
resource for the daily Mass and inspirational programs,” Father Rocky stated in
a news release.
The
Facebook page, Catholic and Proud, which has over 6 million followers, told CNS
in a Facebook message that things appeared to be fine until the evening of July
17, when the page then became unpublished for the next day.
“The
only notification I received was that we weren’t adhering to their policies,
but that’s it, no reason, no example, absolutely nothing,” the Catholic and
Proud page wrote to CNS. “That’s all we know. The inbox message reply here was
also removed, so we couldn’t respond to anyone.”
In
May 2016, Gizmodo, a design, technology, and politics website, published a
piece accusing Facebook of censoring conservative trending topics, specifically
the Conservative Political Action Conference and other conservative leaders.
Their sources, former Facebook “news curators”, even admitted that stories that
were covered by conservative outlets could not be trending unless mainstream
sites covered similar topics.
In response, Facebook’s vice president of search,
Tom Stocky, released a statement saying, “We take these reports extremely
seriously, and have found no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true.”
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