August 17, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Elizabeth Johnston, the parenting blogger known as the Activist Mommy, is the latest pro-family voice to be restricted on social media on “hate speech” grounds, Johnston revealed Wednesday.
Johnston is a Christian, homeschooling mother of ten who comments on family issues from a socially conservative perspective. On Wednesday, she revealed on Twitter that she had just received a Facebook message notifying her of a three-day suspension from posting, commenting, or using Messenger because she allegedly posted “something” that violated the website’s “standards on hate speech.”
I was just banned from Facebook & cut off from my 600,000 followers for at least 3 days. I have no idea why. Facebook sent me no email or notification explaining how I violated their standards. How can we abide by standards when FB won’t show us what violates it? #censorship pic.twitter.com/TW4LSRG4Vl
— The Activist Mommy ����(Elizabeth Johnston) (@activist_mommy) August 16, 2018
She was able to keep the Activist Mommy Facebook page updated thanks to the help of additional administrators who were able to post, Johnston explained, but the lack of detail in Facebook’s explanation remains a cause for concern.
“Facebook's vague ‘community standard’ guidelines cast such a wide net over anything anyone might say, that it's impossible not to offend…unless you're a good little politically correct progressive SJW, of course,” Johnston wrote in an email. “How are we supposed to even work with Facebook if they won't tell us what is and what's not allowed, and if anything we say that dares to go against the radical left narrative may be deemed ‘hateful’?”
It’s unknown what or where the offending post was, but the latest entries on the Activist Mommy blog page do not display hate in their commentary on stories pertaining to abortion, homosexuality, religious freedom, transgenderism, and other topics.
Many conservative, pro-life, pro-family, or even simply Christian pages have received similar treatment from Facebook over the past year, including a Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor who criticized a sexually-suggestive video promoting homosexuality to children, a video detailing a Missouri judicial candidate’s nephew overcoming a severe birth defect, a Franciscan University of Steubenville ad displaying the San Damiano Cross, and various pro-life videos and advertisements.
Facebook generally reverses such decisions after a few days of public outcry, and the social media giant’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that such incidents are isolated errors rather than intentional bias. Conservative critics question why such errors persist with such frequency, however, and do not equally fall on both sides.
Bullying is “the primary tool of the left to influence public opinion,” Johnston said Friday. “Most people can’t endure the harassment, so they choose silence. And ya know what? You’ll have an easier life if you choose silence, BUT YOUR CHILDREN WON’T! If you care about your country & your children, refuse to be bullied into silence or compromise.”