Meta claims another 'error' after conservative college's second complaint about Facebook treatment
"Facebook is at it again," according to one private college in Michigan.
Last month, Facebook shut down Hillsdale College's online courses page the same day the school launched a course critical of communism and Marxism. On Thursday, Hillsdale posted to X that the social media platform issued a warning for those searching for the college's online courses page.
"Facebook is at it again," Hillsdale College posted on X. "Anyone who searches for Hillsdale's online courses page on Facebook sees a warning that they might be searching for terms associated with drug dealers. While we don't deal in narcotics, our online courses are mind-altering. The first one is free! (And every course after that, too.)"
Meta told Fox News Digital in a statement, "This was an error that has since been corrected."
PAT SAJAK STAYING ON AS BOARD CHAIR OF CONSERVATIVE HILLSDALE COLLEGE
The Hillsdale Facebook course page, which reportedly had over 300,000 followers, was shut down Aug. 19 after it launched a course on cultural Marxism that was critical of its impact on "racial tensions, radical feminism, transgender ideology, open borders, fiscal irresponsibility, the unequal protection of the laws, and the loss of our basic rights," according to the course description.
"The @hillsdaleonline Facebook page has been down since Monday night, just as we launched a new course on Marxism, socialism, and communism," the school stated on X. "Facebook is denying people access to our course on repressive ideologies. Such issues are usually resolved within 24 hours, @Meta told us."
In a later clarification to Fox News Digital, the school said the course launched Tuesday morning, but Facebook ads for the course had been running in advance of the launch. Those ads were taken down Monday night, along with the page and all other ad content the college was running from its online courses page, which it said damaged the reach of the course because the day of the launch is one of the most strategically important days for course enrollment.
"Meta claims that Hillsdale’s entire online course page was taken down for almost 100 hours because of ads they mistakenly flagged on Facebook. But those same ads had been running unchanged for over a year. And we don’t even run them on the page they took down," Emily Stack Davis, Hillsdale College's executive director of media relations and communications, told Fox News Digital.
"They are on our main Hillsdale College page. The timing of this censorship — right as we launched our new course on Marxism, socialism and communism — was particularly inopportune."
The first time around, Meta told Fox News Digital in a statement: "This page was taken down in error and was restored before we received this inquiry."
Hillsdale College is a private, conservative Christian liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Michigan. It offers a classical education, which has become an increasingly popular alternative to many U.S. colleges and universities that have been criticized for adopting "woke" ideologies and curricula.
Fox News' Kendall Tietz contributed to this report.