Facebook has banned Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng’s campaign video ad about communist crimes that led her family to flee Cambodia for the U.S., claiming the platform doesn’t allow “shocking, disrespectful, or sensational” content.
Elizabeth Heng, who is running for California’s 16th congressional district seat, made the video about her parent’s escape from mass-murder by the Khmer Rouge communists in the 1970s.
However, according to the Christian Post, Facebook deemed the video to be “shocking, disrespectful or sensational,” and refused to allow her to run the video as an ad on the platform.
.@facebook rejected my video because it was “too shocking” for their platform, referring to the scenes of horrific events my parents survived in Cambodia. Facebook, do you think it’s right to censor history? #censorship
Full ad here: https://t.co/SY0w1o327m pic.twitter.com/etvlZYK22N— Elizabeth Heng (@ElizabethHeng) August 4, 2018
“It is unbelievable that Facebook could have such blatant disregard for the history that so many people, including my own parents, have lived through,” declared Heng in a statement. “I’m sure it is shocking for some people to hear about this kind of injustice, but this is reality. This is why I wake up every single day with the fight and determination to have a voice and make a difference in my community.”
“Neither Facebook nor any other company in the tech industry get to silence our stories,” she continued. “We’ve seen it over and over again with Republican candidates and organizations.”
As reported by the Christian Post, “The Cambodian Civil War, which ended in 1975, killed an estimated 275,000–310,000 people and displaced two million others from rural areas.”
Facebook has censored political ads before. The platform blocked an ad from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), leading her to testify in front of Congress about censorship.
On the other hand, the platform has faced legal problems in Washington for discriminatory ads, such as excluding older job applicants from seeing help wanted ads.
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