Facebook, on the 27th of July 2020, unpublished a page on the social media platform called ExMuslim TV, that merely shared short videos of ex-Muslims and the persecution they faced by the community after they had left Islam. ExMuslim TV took to Twitter on Monday to talk about how Facebook was being unjust in banning their page.
So, Facebook decided to remove https://t.co/PvaKWdQ9aA with no chance of appeal.
— ExMuslim TV (@ExMuslimTV) July 27, 2020
Dear cruel @Facebook,
Our primary purpose is HUMANITARIAN. Most exMuslims who appear here are/were in danger. They either speak to ask for help or to bring hope to others like them.
Pls reconsider. pic.twitter.com/d9MX0aQm9r
Appealing to Facebook to reconsider their decision of banning the page, the Twitter page of ExMuslim TV said, “Our primary purpose is HUMANITARIAN. Most exMuslims who appear here are/were in danger. They either speak to ask for help or to bring hope to others like them”.
In the screenshots shared by the ExMuslim TV Twitter handle, it would appear that Facebook decided to unpublish the page because supposedly, the page went against their ‘incitement and violence’ standards. However, the page is only known the share videos of ex-Muslims who talk about their own ordeal in the videos. In most of the videos shared by the page, Muslims who had left Islam spoke about how they were hounded, persecuted and shunned by the Muslim community after their decision to leave the faith of Islam.
This is the message the Facebook page received before it was unpublished:
Facebook believed that ex-Muslims who had left the faith of Islam talking about their own persecution and appealing for help and understanding somehow posed a ‘genuine risk of physical harm or indirect threat to public safety’.
Further, Facebook informed the page that due to COVID, they have fewer reviewers onboard and hence, may not be able to cater to the appeal by the Facebook page. Essentially, this would mean that ExMuslim TV might not be able to appeal to the decision to unpublish the page by Facebook because the social media giant has fewer reviewers working due to the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic.
Facebook has long been accused of harbouring a bias against anything that goes against the tenets of Liberalism and the Left. In fact, one must recall that recently, they had also released an ‘anti-conservative bias’ report that had made clear that Facebook indeed is biased against anything that goes against the Left and is seen to be remotely ‘conservative’.
With Social Media becoming an ideological battleground, it has often been noticed that platforms selectively target right-leaning platforms in an ad-hoc fashion. Not too long ago, Twitter CEO had “fully admitted“, the platforms “left-leaning” bias.
Facebook has too hugely limited the reach of several pages, many of which are right-leaning. The page owners strongly suspect that their reach is being limited because of the inherent left-bias of these platforms.
Such tactics to silence voices that are inconvenient, however, are not new. It is often seen that voices that are inconvenient to the Left are often branded ‘inciteful’, ‘hateful’, etc just to delegitimise facts that they wish not be spoken about openly.
OpIndia had done a series of articles on the Halal economy and how Halal in itself is a deeply discriminatory process since it allows the employment only of Muslims. In fact, as a rule of slaughter mentioned on their website, it is also required for the Islamic shahada to be read out before the animal is slaughtered. From the slaughter to the packaging, only Muslims are allowed to handle the meat.
Such a discriminatory process is followed by most food packaging companies and in essence, discrimination and bigotry is promoted.
The articles then became of the target of the Liberal ire because several platforms came together to brand the articles ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘aggression against the Muslim community’. One such organisation that targeted OpIndia is ‘Stop Funding Hate’. It’s a community interest company that is registered in the United Kingdom. Recently, they orchestrated a targeted campaign against OpIndia and are still going at it. Their objective is to stop advertisements on OpIndia so that the website cannot earn revenues from them.
The reason for it is pretty clear. OpIndia is a right-wing media portal that regularly offends the orthodoxy of the Left and naturally, the Left cannot have that. It seeks to establish an unchallenged hold over narratives so that people are exposed to information only through Leftist lenses. Should anyone decide to not play by their rules, they wish to damage their revenue earning capacity so that they do not earn enough revenues to be able to run their operations. Whether they can, or cannot, has already been answered here, but try they do.
Something very similar seems to be happening with the Facebook page of ExMuslim TV. They have been de-platformed with misplaced accusations of inciting violence and hate when all they do is post short videos of ex-Muslims narrating the persecution they face. It is unfathomable that individuals talking about how they are being threatened and shunned could ‘incite violence’ by any means, however, Facebook decided to de-platform them simply because they were talking about issues the Left prefers not being talked about.
