A Texas queer bar says it’s still looking for answers after it got its account deleted by Meta.
That deletion comes after months of Meta (Facebook and Instagram) flagging Oilcan Harry’s and its sister bar Rain on 4th for photos that were “inappropriate for minors,” and warning them that the account would be censored for “inappropriate content” and that its spread would be reduced.
However, none of the flagged photos violated any of Facebook’s stated guidelines.
[Scott] Neal told Chron that, strangely, none of the posts that Meta had flagged as inappropriate for users under 18 contained nudity. Rain on 4th and Oilcan Harry’s both regularly post pictures of their dancers, who are usually scantily clad. Instead, posts with drag queens, especially iconic Austin drag performer Brigette Bandit, were flagged more than anything else.
Was it “strangely” though? Was it really? Because it’s not exactly the only bar that’s been targeted, and it isn’t just happening in Texas, either. Check out this graphic from a downtown Los Angeles queer bar, Precinct:
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. I mean, it’s not like Meta loves to step bravely up whenever fascism appears on any of its sites to make sure that it gets viewed by as few people as possible … oh dear, someone’s handing me a note from 2025 …
Meta’s concerning policy changes over the past few months include blocking teens from searching for LGBTQ+ related materials, a move Meta described as an “error,” and, in January, suspension of their fact-checking program, justifying it as a choice favoring “free expression” against “censorship,” apparently falling in line with President Trump’s views about online speech. The company also removed nonbinary and trans themes from its Messenger app, and scrapped their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program.
In this new more permissive online environment, an investigation by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has discovered neo-Nazi activity flourishing on Instagram, including degrading hate speech, antisemitic conspiracism, and even Nazi symbols being used to sell merchandise.
Hmmm. That seems bad! Let’s see what they were up to in other countries, like India, which has a lot of social media enthusiasts and the extremely right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party! From 2020:
Facebook declined to act after discovering that the BJP was circumventing its political ad transparency requirements, according to people familiar with the matter.
The rules require advertisers to verify their identities and disclose them to users. In addition to buying Facebook ads in its own name, the BJP was also found to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars through newly created organizations that didn’t disclose the party’s role, the people said.
Facebook neither took down the pages nor flagged the ads. Instead, it privately raised the matter with the BJP, according to former employees in both India and the U.S., where the decision was discussed.
Oh, well, I’m sure they’ve stopped doing that sort of thing, especially given the extraordinarily popular youth-led Cockroach movement in India pushing back against the BJP’s policies, right?
India’s student-led “Cockroach movement“ has gained attention for using satire and social media to challenge authority. Protester Sakhi says several of her Instagram reels, including one mocking police that drew 40 million views, were removed or restricted under India’s IT Act.
Similar takedown complaints have been reported by activists, journalists and opposition figures. Critics warn of growing pressure on platforms such as Meta, while India’s government denies censorship, saying only content covered by legal restrictions is targeted. Meta did not respond to DW’s request for comment.
Oh. Well, I’m sure they aren’t doing this in every country. Let’s take a look at Myanmar’s recent history!
Meta’s rapid market entry into Myanmar, combined with the enthusiastic embrace of the platform by a population which had long been starved of space to freely express themselves, led to Meta enjoying near-total market dominance in Myanmar by 2017. The Facebook platform was used not only as a means of communicating with friends, but for many people in Myanmar, it became their primary news source, business directory, online marketplace, and go-to search engine.
Sounds pretty okay so far, did anything else happen in 2017?
Oh.
In the months that followed, more than 702,000 people, including children – over 80 per cent of the Rohingya who lived in northern Rakhine State at the crisis’s outset – fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. In Myanmar and elsewhere, at the heart of what is often called “ethnic cleansing,” which is not a legal term, is an organized deportation operation – that is, coordinated action aimed at forcing people to leave their homes and country and at ensuring they do not return.
The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya population was achieved by a relentless and systematic campaign in which the Myanmar security forces unlawfully killed thousands of Rohingya, including young children; raped and committed other sexual violence against hundreds of Rohingya women and girls; tortured Rohingya men and boys in detention sites; pushed Rohingya communities toward starvation by burning markets and blocking access to farmland; and burned hundreds of Rohingya villages in a targeted and deliberate manner.
All that’s from a 2022 Amnesty International report called “Myanmar: The social atrocity: Meta and the right to remedy for the Rohingya,” and you can read it here.
But maybe I’m not extending enough of the benefit of the doubt to Meta. After all, it’s not like they have a history of doing this! Except for when they were censoring stories about violence against Kurds in 2015 and violence in Kashmir in 2016 and … well, maybe it’s been different in the United States all this time.
Nope! They’ve been censoring the American Declaration of Independence as “hate speech” in 2018 and auto-creating white supremacist groups in 2021 — in the middle of the January 6 insurrection, no less — and throwing a little shit-fit tantrum and keeping entire swaths of the global population from having access to news just as the climate catastrophe really got going in 2023 and finally abandoning fact-checking entirely and, well, there’s much more, but you get the idea right?
Man, I’m old enough to remember when I, personally, got put through the wringer for suggesting that Facebook might be, actually, maybe working on behalf of shitty government agencies! How’re my statements on this looking now?
Binkowski, who previously reported on immigration and refugees, said Facebook largely ignored her: “I strongly believe that they are spreading fake news on behalf of hostile foreign powers and authoritarian governments as part of their business model.”
Anyway, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it takes enormous amounts of public pressure to get Facebook groups with names like SwastikaFans1488 taken down (after which we inevitably get gaslit by weird, stupid uggos like Matt Gaetz about “censorship,” which we are forced to endure because American news organizations are now owned by the same people who finance weird, stupid uggos like Matt Gaetz) but Meta just goes ahead and censors nice drag queens doing completely wholesome things all on their own!
You know what that means, right? They’re doing it because they want to. They will keep it going as long as the excuses continue to let them.
What’s that phrase? Oh yeah. “The purpose of a system is what it does.”
The rightwing chuds are always the masters of playing the refs. And of course techbros feel pretty sympatico to them...aside from the obvious of Republican regulatory capture, Republican tax cuts and Republican profit-gobbling merger approvals.
And yes, the algorithms on all this big social media will always tend to thrive on rightwingers too...because it drives engagement. It gets clicks, especially when shitting on vulnerable minorities.
I like DuckDuckGo as a search engine because it blocks Meta trackers and warns me if an action will let Facebook see my activity.
I hate FB and Insta.