Former Congressional Representative Ron Paul has been temporarily suspended from managing his Facebook account after the social-media giant said he violated community standards. The move comes in the same week that Donald Trump was indefinitely blocked on the platform as a result of his incendiary speeches prior to the storming of the Capitol building that left 5 people dead.
Paul, a famed libertarian, said that Facebook had given no in-depth explanation as to why the ban was put in place and said that he only ever used the account to post links to his weekly online column 'Texas Straight Talk'.
Paul tweeted:
"With no explanation other than 'repeatedly going against our community standards,' @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified."
With no explanation other than "repeatedly going against our community standards," @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified. pic.twitter.com/EdMyW9gufa
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) January 11, 2021
An executive at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity told a reporter at the Washington Examiner:
"They claim the lockout is temporary, but have provided no additional information as to the length of the suspension or any remedy."
The last article Paul posted on his Facebook page, titled "The 'War On Terror' Comes Home", argued that Trump should not have been banned from social-media sites Facebook and Twitter. In the article he stated:
"Last week's massive social media purges — starting with President Trump's permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets — was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump's two 'offending' Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later."
It isn't the first time that Paul's material has been removed from online channels. In December, YouTube pulled an episode of his weekly online talk show. The episode that was pulled involved Paul covering a Donald Trump rally. YouTube stated that the episode that had been pulled contained 'medical misinformation' related to the ongoing CoVid-19 pandemic.
Ron Paul, who was a medical doctor before entering politics, is the father of current US Senator Rand Paul. Ron Paul's political positions are regarded as being extremely libertarian and are based around opposing almost all taxation, opposing almost all government intervention in the economy and civil life, and opposing US military intervention abroad.
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