A photo of a cross carved from a trunk of a tree that, according to the caption, was to honor fallen firefighters is spreading across Facebook along with the caption that the social networking is attempting to remove or ban the photo.
An example of this claim can be seen in the Facebook post below.
Firefighters carved this cross in honor of the fallen in Redding. FB deleted it, let’s share it like crazy.
If you ever want other social media users to share your photo, telling them [falsely] that someone is trying to ban or remove the photo seems to be a pretty successful way of achieving that.
It worked with the nativity scene. It worked with military emblems. It worked with saluting veterans. And it worked with the St. Georges Flag, among many other things.
And the latest example of “Facebook is removing” type posts claims that the social network is removing a carved cross created to honor firefighters who gave their lives trying to save others. Why would Facebook want such a photo removed? That pertinent question isn’t addressed by these rumours. Because the rumours are nonsense.
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Facebook isn’t trying to remove the above photo, and has no reason to. It is possible this rumour started as a result of miscommunication. It appears one of the earliest instances of the photo appearing on Facebook was when user Jennifer Futch uploaded the photo, and in the caption claimed that “Groups keeps deleting this picture”[sic] likely referring to the administrators within Facebook groups, and not Facebook themselves.
Firefighters carved this cross in honor of the fallen fighfighters.I live in redding CA. We lost 6 people in Carr fire and 1 firefighter. Groups keeps deleting this picture! ❤❤ I shared it locally here in Shasta county along with many others not to get the likes of number of shares but to show true heroes!
The photo was later uploaded by user Barbara Church a few weeks later who then claimed that Facebook themselves deleted the photo, possibly a mistranslation of Jennifer Futch’s original post.
To reiterate, no Facebook is not deleting this photo, demonstrable by the fact that the photo remains on Facebook accumulating hundreds of thousands of shares.