Facebook reverses ban on conservative children’s book publisher after outcry

Heroes of Liberty

Make Canada Great Again

Take a look at our Make Canada Great Again collection in the Rebel News Store!

Shop Now

Facebook has reversed the ban on a conservative children’s book publisher following a massive outcry on social media that questioned the Big Tech company’s decision to censor the children’s books.

Heroes of Liberty, which launched on November 14, is a conservative children’s book label that offers biographies of American figures like president Ronald Reagan, actor John Wayne, and economist Thomas Sowell.

In late December, Facebook locked the Heroes of Liberty account and prevented it from advertising on the platform.

When the publisher appealed the ruling, the social media giant responded by claiming that Heroes of Liberty failed to comply with “the policy on Low Quality or Disruptive Content.”

Facebook moved to permanently disable the account, which the publisher had spent thousands of dollars to build and advertise on, the Daily Wire reported.

A final appeal from the book publisher brought Facebook to reply with the following message:

After a final review of this ad account, we confirmed it didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards. You can no longer advertise with this ad account and its ads and assets will remain disabled. This is our final decision.

The decision by Facebook prompted Heroes of Liberty editor Bethany Mandel to share her disappointment with the ruling.

Mandel wrote:  

My new children’s book publishing company, @HeroesOfLiberty, was dealt a real blow going into the New Year, when we were banned by Facebook. 

Our books are designed to inspire children. We invested much of our seed capital in building our brand on Facebook … 

When Facebook shut down our account, we lost all the data that we carefully gathered for the last six months. We can’t communicate with the audience that we built. Our ad account is permanently disabled. The consequences to our business could be devastating. 

Mandel complained about Facebook’s practice on a Fox Business appearance, stating that her company was “not in politics,” clarifying that “we are in the business of creating beautiful stories about great people that will entertain children and give them life lessons.”

“To cancel children’s books because they celebrate American values that 90 per cent of Americans believe in isn’t even anti-conservative bias, it’s anti-American. Pure madness,” she said.

As noted by the Daily Wire, her protest received the attention of high-profile conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz who expressed his anger at Facebook’s treatment of the publisher.

When conservatives start independent publishing outlets and platforms, #BigTech companies like Facebook now work to destroy them. This latest example is particularly galling. https://t.co/EkT41avNII

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 3, 2022

The complaint was also echoed by Fox News senior analyst Brit Hume, who tweeted, “This is sickening. The books were about Ronald Reagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Thomas Sowell. Facebook blocked ads for them claiming they violate a policy against ‘low-quality or disruptive’ content. What bullsh*t.”

Facebook, clearly under fire and facing the heat to provide answers, swiftly reversed the ban.

Andy Stone, the policy and communications director at Facebook’s parent company, Meta, publicly stated that the ban was an “error” that “should not have happened.”

This should not have happened. It was an error and the ad account’s been restored.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) January 4, 2022

The tech company would later inform multiple legislators and public figures that the decision was a mistake and that it had been reversed.

Despite its public retraction of the ban, the book company’s editor Mandel says that Facebook did not reach out directly to her or her company, and that she discovered Facebook’s reversal of the decision on Twitter.

Facebook’s decision, which was apparently “final” was swiftly proven to be not quite so final after all. All it took was a little bit of outrage.