Facebook has confirmed what many publishers and users have been reporting over the last few days – all mentions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower, whose complaint started the current impeachment inquiry against President Trump, are being actively scrubbed from the platform.
Here’s Facebook’s statement on the matter:
“Any mention of the potential whistleblower’s name violates our coordinating harm policy, which prohibits content “outing of witness, informant, or activist.’ We are removing any and all mentions of the potential whistleblower’s name and will revisit this decision should their name be widely published in the media or used by public figures in debate.”
The name of the alleged whistleblower has already been published by Republican and Democrat public figures, by media outlets, and in government documents.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the name of the alleged whistleblower and Congressman Adam Schiff also tweeted out an unredacted transcript featuring their name. In addition to this, Heavy.com published the whistleblower’s name back in October.
However, despite the name being widely known on the internet and there being no law prohibiting the naming of the whistleblower, Facebook is banning all mentions of the name.
The statement from Facebook corroborates the reporting of many other outlets over the last few days who have had their posts taken down and been threatened with a complete ban after posting about the alleged whistleblower. While Facebook wouldn’t say which rules these pages had violated, the posts that were taken down either named or linked to posts about the alleged whistleblower.
LaCorte News has reported that its Facebook page along with the pages of Breitbart News, The Gateway Pundit, and other pages owned by Bivona Digital were locked and threatened with deletion by Facebook after posting about the alleged whistleblower.
