Facebook deleted an NC senator’s post about debunked COVID-19 video

A Facebook post by a North Carolina state senator has been removed by the social media platform because the post shared a debunked video promoting alternative COVID-19 treatments.

It’s the second time Facebook’s attempts to curb the spread of misinformation have affected a post by Sen. Bob Steinburg, who now says the government should “crack down” on social media censorship.

Steinburg, an Edenton Republican, said his post had questioned why Facebook and other social media sites were determining what people should and shouldn’t see. He said he was shocked to see it disappear.

“This is run so amok, that I believe it is essential for the government to step in and crack down on these folks, and do whatever needs to be done to enforce the First Amendment,” Steinburg said in an interview with The News & Observer.

“And our government, and our courts are responsible for enforcing the freedoms of all of our amendments, including the First Amendment. And we cannot allow the social media companies to, and Google and so forth, to just do that on their own.”

Steinburg didn’t say what government should do.

But Philip Napoli, a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, said the First Amendment applies to speech limitations by the government, not social media companies like Facebook.

“Does he have any more right to disseminate his opinions on Facebook, than he has a First Amendment right to publish a letter in the paper?’” Napoli said. “The free speech rights are in relation to government interference. That’s how we think about the First Amendment.”

The protest post

Steinburg shared a video on May 31 that has since been debunked. The video allegedly depicted a shopkeeper being beaten to death by protesters, though fact-checking by USA Today revealed that the man had not been killed, that he was wielding a machete and that there were conflicting reports about who was the aggressor.

Steinburg’s original post said the man was killed, but it was later edited to say he was beaten to “near death.” Facebook flagged the post as containing misleading information.

A Facebook spokesperson said it had already been debunked by independent fact-checkers, and that sharing it brought the false-information flag along with it.

The spokesperson added that text posts made by politicians are generally not flagged or removed, but could be deleted if deemed to potentially cause harm.

The COVID-19 post

Last month, Steinburg said in a post on Facebook that one of his recent posts had been removed by the site.

According to Steinburg, his post addressed the removal of a viral video by a group calling itself “America’s Frontline Physicians.”

Multiple social media platforms have removed posts including the video. It promoted alternative COVID-19 treatments, like hydroxychloroquine, that have been widely refuted by doctors and health experts. In June, the U.S Food and Drug Administration said the drug “showed no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or speeding recovery.”

Steinburg said the post was gone within a few hours of being published. He said it had received around a hundred likes and a range of comments.

“We’ve removed this video for making false claims about cures and prevention methods for COVID-19,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement sent to The News & Observer by email. “People who reacted to, commented on, or shared this video, will see messages directing them to authoritative information about the virus.”

Facebook confirmed on Friday that it had deleted Steinburg’s post, too.

Does flagging posts curb misinformation?

Steinburg called his post’s alleged removal “an absolutely flagrant violation of our First Amendment.”

“In a country where free speech and the First Amendment are paramount, how can they possibly be judge and jury?” he said. “How can they make that judgment for us, as to what we should see and what we shouldn’t see?”

Napoli has studied media regulation and policy for years, authoring three books and more than 50 articles on the topic. He said social media sites might use many different degrees of response against posts deemed misleading — including flagging posts, limiting their spread on social media feeds, and removing posts altogether.

“There’s a lot of levels of curation essentially that these platforms have at their disposal, and that they’re finding is increasingly necessary to use,” he said.

Donald Bryson, president and CEO of the NC Civitas Institute, a conservative policy organization, expressed similar concerns to Steinburg — namely, sharing the belief that the sites are biased against conservatives. But to Bryson, the solution is not government regulation, but migration to alternative sites.

“These are not government services,” he said. “People are under no contractual obligation to expect anything from Facebook, or Twitter.”

“But people have a right to association, and if they don’t like how they’re being treated on Facebook, or Twitter, I don’t think the answer is increasing government regulation — that’s definitely not the free market answer,” Bryson continued. “The answer is people should find another venue.”

While Steinburg said he agreed with this approach as a long-term goal, he cited the approaching election in arguing for action to be taken sooner.

“It is too late for that in the year 2020,” he said. “I don’t like the government getting involved in these kinds of things either, but this is so egregious right now.”

Complaints of social media interference in politics are not unique to Republicans, though, and in the aftermath of the 2016 election, many believed Facebook and other social media sites had in part enabled President Donald Trump’s rise to office.

A Buzzfeed News analysis found that in the final months of the 2016 election, fake election stories garnered much more attention on Facebook than those from real news outlets. All but three of the top 20 fake stories were explicitly pro-Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton.

But even when articles or posts are flagged as misleading or inaccurate, Napoli said such warnings can elicit a range of responses.

“The research is showing it really does depend a lot on the characteristics of the individual who’s being exposed,” he said. “So we’ve seen, for example, in some cases in some studies, when something is flagged as misinformation that could actually provoke some categories of users to share it more widely or to or even to believe it more. It all depends on the attitude that the user has towards the platform.”

In a statement over email, Wayne Goodwin, chair of the NC Democratic Party, condemned Steinburg’s posts as “actively spreading disinformation.”

“It is completely inappropriate for a sitting Senator to be actively spreading disinformation, especially in a time of crisis,” he said. “As public officials, we take an oath to protect and serve — these actions betray that duty.”

But Steinburg argued his posts were meant to encourage discussion and debate, and that people should decide for themselves what to believe.

“You put things out there in a free society for people to look at and listen to and then let them make up their own minds as to whether they think this is valid, whether they think this is poppycock, whatever,” Steinburg said. “But we don’t need people on Facebook and Google doing our thinking screening for us.”

“Let’s face it, there’s a lot of stuff out there. If everybody believed everything that they see on social media, God help us,” he later added. “So I try to scrutinize very carefully before I put anything out there.”

This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 8:00 AM.