In March 2022 Facebook deleted one of my posts about the tyrannical government in Saudi Arabia, and accused me of "hate speech".
I was allowed to appeal, but only by clicking a button saying that I disagreed with their decision. There was absolutely no means of submitting evidence that what I'd said was true.
I was allowed to appeal, but only by clicking a button saying that I disagreed with their decision. There was absolutely no means of submitting evidence that what I'd said was true.
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| The deleted image, and Facebook's warning |
"The Saudi tyranny just mass executed 81 people"
This is a completely uncontroversial statement of fact.
This barbaric mass execution was widely reported across scores of media sources, including the BBC, left-leaning outfits like Byline Times and hard-right broadcasters like GBNews (archived) It was also condemned by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Saudi Arabia is "committing war crimes in Yemen"
Saudi Arabia's ongoing bombardment of Yemen hardly gets a fraction of the coverage of Putin's attack on Ukraine, but that doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
Human Rights Watch have documented multiple Saudi war crimes in Yemen, and it should be widespread knowledge that the Saudis have bombed all kinds of civilian targets from funeral gatherings, to children's school busses.
Saudi Arabia "fund and support terrorism"
In 2016 Hillary Clinton's leaked emails demonstrated that the US government were well aware that Saudi Arabia were funding terrorism in Syria.
Furthermore US President Joe Biden has openly admitted that Saudi Arabia provided "hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons" to Al Qaida's successor organisations in Syria.
Then there's Boris Johnson, who accused Saudi Arabia of "twisting Islam" and conducting proxy wars across the middle east.
Saudi Arabia have also provided funds to terrorist insurgencies in Afghanistan, which led to the creation of Al Qaida, and the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States, in which 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudis.
Saudi Arabia "brutally repress political opposition"
Saudi Arabia's repression of political opposition is well documented. Amnesty International reports that in Saudi Arabia freedom of expression, association, and assembly are all repressed.
Their repression of political dissent is so extreme that they've even sentenced a 14 year old child to death for attending a pro-democracy march!
It's hardly hateful conduct to point out that one of the most tyrannical regimes on earth is politically repressive.
Saudi Arabia "dismember critical journalists"
This is clearly a reference to the Jamal Khashoggi assassination, where the Saudi regime lured him to the Saudi embassy in Turkey, where they tortured him, murdered him, dismembered his body, and dissolved it in acid.
The murderers then reportedly took Khashoggi's severed fingers back to the Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salmen as a trophy, because he'd boasted that he'd cut off the fingers of any writer who criticised him.
Khashoggi was just one of the dissidents and critical journalists targeted for assassination by the so-called "Tiger Squad".
Saudi Arabia are "misogynists and homophobes"
Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive regimes on earth for women's rights, and they still have the death penalty for homosexuality.
Even when they don't condemn homosexuals to death, they dish out utterly barbaric punishments like public lashings, and long prison sentences.
Saudi Arabia "threaten terrorist attacks against western countries to get their own way"
The Saudi regime famously threatened terrorist attacks against Britain in order to get an investigation into corrupt arms deals shut down, and during a spat with Canada a verified Saudi Twitter account posted a photoshopped picture of a 9/11 style terrorist attack against Canada!
Boris Johnson went to Saudi Arabia to "grovel for more oil"
Johnson's grovelling trip to Saudi Arabia was widely reported. And the reason for his visit was repeatedly given as seeking an oil deal in an attempt to reduce reliance on Russian energy supplies.
I've substantiated every single assertion in the banned infographic, but the truth simply doesn't matter to Facebook.
They've set up reporting systems that are incredibly easy to game. Whether a post is true or not is completely irrelevant. The simple truth is that if the post gets mass reported, then it'll be deleted as hate speech, no matter how easy it is to substantiate literally all of the points.
What we're witnessing is an absurd weaponisation of liberal language in order to erase fact-based criticism of probably the most illiberal regime on earth.
Defenders of this disgusting regime are gaming Facebook's report functions, and using the language of anti-racism to pretend that truthful criticism of Saudi Arabia is racist hate speech.
And by going along with these tactics, Facebook are complicit in attacking the truth.
The deletion of my post came with a warning that the Another Angry Voice Facebook page is under threat of deletion, so if it does disappear, you'll know that one of the main reasons it was deleted out of existence was the fact that I chose to tell the truth about Saudi Arabia, and instead of standing up for the truth, Facebook stood with the tyrannical regime to attack me for telling the truth.
Johnson's grovelling trip to Saudi Arabia was widely reported. And the reason for his visit was repeatedly given as seeking an oil deal in an attempt to reduce reliance on Russian energy supplies.
Conclusion
I've substantiated every single assertion in the banned infographic, but the truth simply doesn't matter to Facebook.
They've set up reporting systems that are incredibly easy to game. Whether a post is true or not is completely irrelevant. The simple truth is that if the post gets mass reported, then it'll be deleted as hate speech, no matter how easy it is to substantiate literally all of the points.
What we're witnessing is an absurd weaponisation of liberal language in order to erase fact-based criticism of probably the most illiberal regime on earth.
Defenders of this disgusting regime are gaming Facebook's report functions, and using the language of anti-racism to pretend that truthful criticism of Saudi Arabia is racist hate speech.
And by going along with these tactics, Facebook are complicit in attacking the truth.
The deletion of my post came with a warning that the Another Angry Voice Facebook page is under threat of deletion, so if it does disappear, you'll know that one of the main reasons it was deleted out of existence was the fact that I chose to tell the truth about Saudi Arabia, and instead of standing up for the truth, Facebook stood with the tyrannical regime to attack me for telling the truth.
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