A member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Benjamin Essuman, claims that the government has deleted a Facebook post made by the member of parliament for the North Tongu constituency, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, on Thursday, which claimed that a member of the board of trustees of the controversial national cathedral project used two separate identities for various dealings.
The viral post by Ablakwa was made on Monday, January 16, 2022.
Mr Essuman stated in a Facebook post that “it is either Facebook has accepted monetary payments from the Government of Ghana to make this happen, or it will be that the Govt has secured a serious expertise capable of overriding Facebook and its security systems [sic].”
Ablakwa, in a Facebook post, also said: “The cowardly furtive dark forces masterminded the deletion of the mother of all cathedral scandals.”
This was widely reported in various online publications, as can be seen here and here.
Their comments suggest that the post may have been automatically deleted by Facebook or usurped by persons opposed to this post.
His post has attracted many reactions as the national cathedral issues have recently topped media discussions.
Ablakwa has consistently published information meant to prove corruption, among other underhand dealings related to the project.
Did Facebook automatically delete his post? Did the government sponsor his post to be removed from Facebook?
Verification
Apart from an author deleting their post, Facebook can delete a post if it is against its community standards. Still, when it does, it notifies the author of its action and allows the author to appeal the decision.
Sometimes, an author’s Facebook account may be hacked, and the intruder deletes the post. Still, there is insufficient evidence to back this probability in this specific instance.
Facebook’s community moderation policies directly address the issue of post deletions.
These elaborate policies clearly state the only conditions under which posts are removed and how it goes about.
Its community standards can be found here, and the specific actions or sanctions taken on any publication determined to be against the standards can be found here.
According to the document, actions taken on errant posts include deletion of content, holding violation strikes against accounts, restricting accounts and disabling accounts.
On post deletion, which specifically touches on the claims made, Facebook emphasises that it notifies account owners of their violation.
“We’ll let you know when something you posted goes against our Community Standards or Community Guidelines. Usually, this notice appears in your Feed when you log in to your Facebook or Instagram. You can also find it in your Support Inbox on Facebook or Support Requests on Instagram,” the document states.
It adds that accounts found to have violated the standards will, as much as possible, be informed of the specific standard they have violated.
These content removal and notification process are further explained as follows:
If the post was not deleted by the author and was not unilaterally deleted by the platform, can mass reporting get a post removed? According to Facebook, its decision on whether or not to remove a post depends not on whether there is mass action against it but on whether the post goes against its community standards.
Also, many online queries, including this from PCMag, confirm that Facebook will always notify a user if his/her post is removed for going against the community standard.
According to the startup support website Chron, if a post author claims his or her post is missing, it’s either been removed by Facebook and the author duly informed, or the author mistakenly deleted it.
Conclusion
Based on the above, it is very unlikely that Mr Ablakwa’s post was removed without notification, as claimed. Also, as Facebook says, it cannot be confirmed that a possible mass reporting of the post led to removal or deletion.
