Report: Instagram Is ‘Fact Checking’ Jokes About Anthony Fauci

Facebook-owned Instagram is “fact checking” satirical posts about Anthony Fauci, and forcing users to delete them, according to reports.

According to a post by Reclaim the Net, YouTuber Luke Rudkowski was censored by Instagram after sharing a satirical headline about Fauci entitled: “Face masks over your eyes so you can’t read his leaked emails.”

Via Reclaim the Net:

Luke Rudkowski, founder of the independent news outlet We Are Change, reported that when he shared a post that jokes about Fauci recommending “face masks over your eyes so you can’t read his leaked emails” on Instagram, he was told it was “missing context” based on a fact check from USA Today.

Not only was the title of the post a clear indicator that the post wasn’t to be taken seriously but the source of the post, satirical news site Genesius Times, gives readers another indicator of its satirical nature by stating at the top of every page that it’s “The Most Reliable Source of Fake News on the Planet.”

When posts are flagged by fact checkers, Instagram usually allows them to stay up but attaches a warning, hides them behind an interstitial, and suppresses their reach by up to 95%.

Unlike the cases where Instagram allows fact checked posts to remain up, Rudkowski claims he was forced to delete it. The YouTuber claims he was told that “accounts that repeatedly share false information and their posts won’t appear in certain places on Instagram,” and of course, there was no appealing the decision.

This would not be the first time Instagram has “fact checked” satirical posts.

As Breitbart News reported in 2019:

Self-proclaimed “meme artist” LUSHUX reported on Twitter that a humorous image featuring Hillary Clinton claiming to have killed Jeffrey Epstein was also “fact-checked” as false.

The fact-check caption says: “False: there’s no evidence Hillary Clinton killed Jeffrey Epstein. It runs counter to medical examiner and federal prosecutor conclusions.”

Facebook, which owns Instagram, has also repeatedly censored the Babylon Bee, a conservative-run comedy website that posts satirical news stories.

Breitbart News has reached out to Instagram for comment.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.