Facebook-owned Instagram has flagged the account of Donald Trump Jr., accusing the conservative leader of “repeatedly posting false information,” although Mark Zuckerberg’s platform has not specified what the allegedly false information consists of.
Taylor Budowich, director of communications for Donald Trump and co-founder of a recently launched news site with Don Jr, said he attempted to tag the 45th President’s son in an Instagram post and was promptly met with a warning message from the platform, asking the account to reconsider tagging the president.
The warning message says, “this account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact checkers or went against our Community Guidelines. Do you want to @mention this account?”
“Something tells me if Adam Schiff was tagged, who repeatedly lied on the record about the Russia hoax, this warning wouldn’t exist,” said Budowich in a post on Twitter.
The “third-party fact checkers” used by Instagram and Facebook are notorious for targeting conservatives, with members of the network including organizations that directly compete with conservative media, like mainstream news publication USA Today.
During the 2020 election, fact checkers repeatedly ran cover for the Democrats, adding warning labels and “fact checks” to accurate but negative stories about Joe Biden.
Even Facebook admits that its fact checkers are not impartial. In court filings, the platform has said that it should be immune from defamation charges brought over the rulings of “fact checkers,” because those rulings are “protected opinion.”
In comments to the European Commission last year, Facebook VP Nick Clegg said that Facebook’s third-party fact checkers “have their own agenda” and are “not necessarily objective.” At the time, Facebook claimed that Clegg’s comments did not suggest bias in the fact-checking program.
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. Follow him on Twitter @LibertarianBlue.
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