Meta admits 'error' in taking down conservative college's Facebook page

Facebook shut down Hillsdale College's online courses page the same day the school launched a course critical of Communism and Marxism last week.

"The @hillsdaleonline Facebook page has been down since Monday night, just as we launched a new course on Marxism, socialism, and communism," the school stated on X. "Facebook is denying people access to our course on repressive ideologies. Such issues are usually resolved within 24 hours, @Meta told us."

In a later clarification to Fox News Digital, the school said the course launched Tuesday morning, but Facebook ads for the course had been running in advance of the launch. Those ads were taken down Monday night, along with the page and all other ad content the college was running from its online courses page, which they said damaged the reach of the course because the day of the launch is one of the most strategically important days for course enrollment. 

Emily Stack Davis, Hillsdale College executive director of media relations and communications, told Fox News Digital: "Meta claims that Hillsdale’s entire online course page was taken down for almost 100 hours because of ads they mistakenly flagged on Facebook. 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 told Fox News Digital in a statement: "This page was taken down in error and was restored before we received this inquiry."

The Hillsdale Facebook course page, which reportedly had over 300,000 followers, was shut down Monday after it launched a course on cultural Marxism that was critical of its 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," according to the course description. 

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"The effects of Marx’s ideas have already been seen in the histories of the Soviet Union and China," the course description continues. "Yet Marxism remains popular among those who shape our cultural, academic, and political lives and in the popular movements pushing equity and diversity. All human relationships are now defined in terms of the systemic oppression of one group by another."

She continued, "Meta’s failure to provide an adequate explanation is especially distressing given the grave consequences: A third of our online course enrollments come via Facebook, the majority of them in the first days after we launch a course. We have potentially lost thousands of enrollees. More importantly, Meta has denied people access to a serious academic course on repressive ideologies." 

Hillsdale College recorded a 53% increase in applications as of April 2022. The private, conservative, Christian liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Michigan offers a classical education, which has become an increasingly popular alternative to many U.S. colleges and universities that have been criticized for adopting "woke" ideologies and curricula. 

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The move by Meta, Facebook's parent company, comes after Vice President Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that she would institute a "federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries" as president in an attempt to stop "big corporations" from taking advantage of consumers. 

But the idea was quickly criticized by outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Newsweek. Many critics likened the move to price control measures often implemented by communist governments.

Former President Trump described the move as a "Soviet style" economic policy. 

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