On Monday, a spokeswoman for social media giant Facebook acknowledged that the website had incorrectly flagged a post featuring the now-iconic photo of President Donald Trump raising his fist after an assassination attempt, falsely labeling the post as “misinformation.”
As reported by the New York Post, the post in question was made by the account End Wokeness, which featured the most popular photo from the events of July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania. The photo, captured by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, captured the moment where President Trump raised a fist just moments after a bullet grazed his ear. Surrounded by Secret Service agents, and with blood on his face and a large American flag in the background, the image has already been lauded as one of the most historically significant photos of all time, and has been used by Trump supporters across the country and around the world.
After the post was flagged as “misinformation,” End Wokeness was threatened with being deplatformed over the post. But on Monday, Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever issued a statement on X confirming that the flagging of the post “was an error.”
“Yes, this was an error.” This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo,” Lever explained. “This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake.”
This incident is just one of many involving Big Tech companies suppressing or even outright deleting content related to the assassination attempt, where one rallygoer lost his life and two others were critically injured. President Trump was previously banned off of most social media platforms following the peaceful protest at the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021. His accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter have all been restored, and with the exception of Twitter (now X), he has returned to regular use of all of them ahead of the November election.
Well, of course they are. The only surprise is that they have stopped censuring it since they got caught.