Hillsdale College, a Michigan-based institution known for its conservative bent, took to X on Thursday to report that the social media platform Facebook, operated by Meta, had issued a warning for those searching for its online courses page that it was drug-related.
"Facebook is at it again," the school wrote. "Anyone who searches for Hillsdale's online courses page on Facebook sees a warning that they might be searching for terms associated with drug dealers. While we don't deal in narcotics, our online courses are mind-altering. The first one is free! (And every course after that, too)."
Meta responded to the incident, telling Fox News Digital, "This was an error that has since been corrected."
On Aug. 19, Hillsdale College's Facebook page, which had over 300,000 followers, was shut down after the launch of a course on cultural Marxism. According to the course description, it was critical of Marxism's impact on "racial tensions, radical feminism, transgender ideology, open borders, fiscal irresponsibility, the unequal protection of the laws, and the loss of our basic rights."
Around that time, Hillsdale posted to X that its "Facebook page has been down since Monday night, just as we launched a new course on Marxism, socialism, and communism. Facebook is denying people access to our course on repressive ideologies. Such issues are usually resolved within 24 hours, @Meta told us."
Hillsdale later told Fox News Digital that ads promoting the course had been running before the course officially launched. The ads, along with the entire page and other content, were taken down by Facebook in a move that the college said hurt the course's exposure on its most critical day for enrollment.
"Meta claims that Hillsdale's entire online course page was taken down for almost 100 hours because of ads they mistakenly flagged on Facebook," Emily Stack Davis, Hillsdale College's executive director of media relations and communications, told Fox News Digital. "But those same ads had been running unchanged for over a year.
"And we don't even run them on the page they took down. They are on our main Hillsdale College page. The timing of this censorship — right as we launched our new course on Marxism, socialism, and communism — was particularly inopportune."
Meta issued a follow-up statement to Fox News Digital, maintaining that "the page was taken down in error and was restored before we received this inquiry."
Nick Koutsobinas ✉
Nick Koutsobinas, a Newsmax writer, has years of news reporting experience. A graduate from Missouri State University’s philosophy program, he focuses on exposing corruption and censorship.
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