Instagram slapped a “fact-check” on President Donald Trump’s Pearl Harbor remembrance post Wednesday, insisting on a post that had nothing to do with the election that President-elect Joe Biden is, indeed, the president-elect.
“Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 US Presidential Election,” tagged the Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform on a post that merely featured a graphic of the president, first lady, and man in uniform honoring those who sacrificed.
Instagram later removed the tag.
They heard you. @instagram removed the warning/fact check they put on President Trump’s Pearl Harbour post. #RevokeSection230 pic.twitter.com/hzD44NmIJx
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) December 8, 2020
While Trump has disputed the results, deriding the contest as unfair, Trump’s Monday post had nothing to do with legal challenges his campaign launched to flip several tipping-point states in the president’s favor. Instagram’s censorship in fact reinforces that the election wasn’t fair due to big tech interference with what voters were able to learn about the candidates.
It was less than two months ago that Facebook was selectively applying its rules to suppress blockbuster stories of incriminating information on its preferred presidential candidate. When the New York Post published the most damning revelations of the entire campaign in mid-October implicating former Vice President Joe Biden in his son’s potentially criminal overseas business activity, Facebook joined Twitter to announce through a company spokesperson and former Democratic staffer that the social networking giant would preemptively censor the stories.
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020
Trump and his campaign were plagued by online censorship through the entire course of the 2020 election. According to a study conducted by the Media Research Center, Facebook and Twitter censored the president and associated campaign accounts at least 65 times in the two years leading up to Nov. 3, while not censoring Biden once.
