Whistle-blower documents from Australia said that, although Facebook said implementing the ban was intended to affect only news outlets, “executives knew its process for classifying news for the removal of pages was so broad that it would likely hit government pages and other [health and] social services.”
It did, in fact, hit over 170,000 pages, including the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, the Council to Homeless Persons, Suicide Prevention Australia, domestic violence support pages, The Kids' Cancer Project, the Royal Children's Hospital, the Jewish Holocaust Centre, state fire and rescue during fire season, and municipal state and territorial governmental pages.
Facebook then said this was a “technical error” that it “worked to correct”, and that any suggestion Facebook did this deliberately was “categorically and obviously false.”
Mr. Dinsdale, do you agree it was a technical error and there was no attempt to shut down these pages?