Is Facebook banning images of the Confederate flag? Fact Check

Facebook posts claim that the social networking site is removing posts related to the American Confederate flag.

Such claims have been spreading across Facebook for a number of years, and they’re plainly false. They are just another version of the persistent “Facebook is banning…” niche of Internet rumours that spread the social networking site daily.

One popular example of this hoax was posted in September 2015 by the Facebook page ‘Southern Rebel‘ (below) which accumulated hundreds of thousands of shares.

Make this go viral, they take down my flag post, I will post another. Tired of the political correct BS!

The claim made in posts like this that assert Facebook is banning the Confederate flag is demonstrably untrue, simply by observing the fact that posts like this haven’t been taken down. The post above was posted three years ago (at the time of writing) and is still available, yet bizarrely Facebook users continue to share such drivel.

The claim about the supposed ban was also reiterated in a series of articles published by notorious spoof news websites including TheNationalReport.net. However these were not intended to be taken seriously. TheNationalReport.net includes a disclaimer that articles are for entertainment purposes only.

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To debunk this claim, an observer would only need to do a simple Facebook search for the confederate flag to reveal numerous posts, updates, fan pages and even groups centered around the subject of the confederate flag along with countless images of the flag as well.

Internet hoaxers and propaganda machines often utilise the modus operandi of purporting a phantom ban supposedly imposed by Facebook. In the past, nativity scenes, The St. Georges Cross, swearing, images of the military and military emblems, among others, have all been allegedly banned by Facebook, but a simple search for any of those is sufficient to dispel such bunk.

Facebook hasn’t banned the Confederate Flag. It’s a hoax.