Natural News was banned by Facebook over the weekend, causing founder Mike Adams to call for President Donald Trump to use military action against the tech companies. But we didn’t actually know what moved Facebook to finally ban the website. Facebook now says it banned Natural News for spam.
“We removed this Page for violating our policies against spam,” a Facebook spokesperson told Gizmodo by email, providing a link to the policy. The policy bans everything from artificially increasing “distribution for financial gain” to using fake accounts to impersonate other people and businesses. Facebook did not elaborate on what specific part of the anti-spam policy Natural News violated.
But frankly, it doesn’t matter what part of the spam policy finally got Natural News booted. It just seems really weird that Natural News got banned by Facebook for spam instead of the countless other things that the website does on a daily basis. It’s a bit like when prohibition-era mobster Al Capone got arrested for tax evasion instead of for all those murders.
Natural News, which had almost 3 million fans before it was banned on Facebook, spreads incredibly hateful content on the internet, preaching against things like gay rights, the so-called “globalists,” non-Christian religions, and immigrants.
And it’s not just hate that Natural News regularly spews out into the world. The website spreads conspiracy theories about myriad health issues surrounding 5G telecom equipment, vaccines, and “cancer cures,” among plenty of other bullshit. Natural News regularly campaigns against chemotherapy drugs in favour of these supposed cancer “cures” with no proven efficacy in treating cancer. And that’s the kind of misinformation that ultimately gets people killed.
This is the website that published a DIY Ebola vaccine, for fuck’s sake. The “vaccine” even required a live sample from an Ebola patient.
The actual instructions for their injectable Ebola vaccine, with emphasis added:
What you need:
1. A face mask and gloves
2. Two bottles (50 ml up to 500 ml glass or plastic bottles) with caps
3. Clean water (mineral or tap water)
4. An Ebola sample: some spit or other disease product, such as blood, from a person infected with Ebola, or who is suspected sick with it.
Any small quantity will do, even a pinhead.
5. An alcoholic liquid, such as whisky, brandy, rum, etc.
6. Half an hour of your time.
The original article on an Ebola vaccine has been removed from Natural News, but you can see the instructions at number six here.
Again, we don’t know precisely what part of Facebook’s anti-spam policies were violated. But it’s pretty funny that spam is what finally brought down Natural News—at least on Facebook. YouTube and Twitter had banned Natural News much earlier.
Maybe Twitter can take a lesson from Facebook in some respects. Twitter refuses to take down people like David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, despite the holocaust denial he spreads on a daily basis. But maybe Duke has violated some obscure Twitter policy about not looking like a corpse or some shit. It’s worth a shot.