MTG hit with Facebook suspension after Twitter ban

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Monday she has been temporarily barred from posting on her Facebook account by the social network, less than a day after losing her personal Twitter account.

“Facebook has joined Twitter in censoring me,” Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on Gettr, a social media platform favored by some right-wing conservatives. “This is beyond censorship of speech.”

Greene’s post included a screenshot appearing to show that she would be prohibited from posting or commenting from her Facebook account for a period of 24 hours for violating the platform’s policy against misinformation — a characterization she disputed.

“Who appointed Twitter and Facebook to be the authorities of information and misinformation?” she wrote. “When Big Tech decides what political speech of elected Members is accepted and what’s not then they are working against our government and against the interest of our people.”

A spokesperson for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, confirmed that it took down a post of Greene’s.

“A post violated our policies and we have removed it; but removing her account for this violation is beyond the scope of our policies,” Aaron Simpson said in a statement.

On Sunday Greene was permanently locked out of her personal Twitter account for repeated violations of the company’s Covid-19 misinformation policy. The move came after several previous suspensions for similar rules violations, though the permanent suspension does not apply to her official Twitter account.

A first-term lawmaker, Greene has seen her profile soar due to numerous controversies relating to her incendiary social media posts, which have included bigotry, Islamophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, support for conspiracy theories and calls for violence against her political enemies.

Last February the House voted to strip Greene of her committee membership in response to her behavior, though Greene has remained defiant and has arguably only seen her star rise in the intervening period.

She is one of a number of prominent Republican lawmakers who have run afoul of social media companies’ policies — particularly regarding the 2020 elections and Covid-related issues — and either had their content taken down or faced suspension. Many of them have railed against those large platforms, accusing them of bias against conservatives and stifling free speech.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy issued a lengthy statement Monday that did not mention Greene by name but hammered social media companies over "recent decisions to silence Americans — including a sitting member of Congress," among others.

"It is clear any speech that does not fit Big Tech’s orthodoxy gets muzzled," he said. "America is poorer for that conduct."

Also on Monday Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who was temporarily suspended from YouTube in the fall, announced that he would no longer post to videos on the site “unless it is to criticize them” and pointed his audience to a competing platform.

“Those of us who believe that truth comes from disputation and that the marketplace of ideas is a prerequisite for innovation should shun the close-minded censors of Big Tech and take our ideas elsewhere,” Paul wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Examiner.