Evangelical leader Franklin Graham accepted Facebook’s apology and suggested the social network come up with a standard based on “God’s word” after the tech company mistakenly banned him for 24 hours last week over a 2016 post about HB2, North Carolina’s controversial “bathroom bill.”
“I was defending our governor and the state on HB2. It was a good law. If you disagree with [Facebook’s] position on sexual orientation, you can be classified as hate speech,” said Graham in an exclusive interview on “Fox & Friends” Sunday.
In a post to his Facebook page, Graham said the social network is “trying to define truth. They’re making the rules and changing the rules. Truth is truth. God made the rules and His Word is truth. Actually, Facebook is censoring free speech. The free exchange of ideas is part of our country’s DNA.”
A Facebook spokesperson told Fox News the 2016 post was removed by mistake after one of its 15,000 content moderators decided that it violated the tech giant’s ban on “dehumanizing language.” The post and Graham’s page have since been restored.
“I accept Facebook’s apology and I appreciate them stepping up and doing that,” Graham said, but he questioned why the tech giant would censure such an old post. “I think it was just really a personal attack towards me.”
Facebook came under fire late last week after one of its employees leaked more than 1,000 pages of documents detailing its content moderation policies and how it polices speech on a global scale. Critics have said the company wields too much power and has made mistakes in determining whether something is hate speech or part of a country’s mainstream dialogue.
“Facebook’s a private company and they can certainly do what they want,” Graham explained. “But [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is a platform for all ideas. I encourage Facebook to have a standard that doesn’t move. They ought to just come up with a standard based on God’s word that applies to all people everywhere.” – READ MORE