Social media companies take down, flag Greitens’ people-hunting video
Social media companies on Monday grappled with how to handle a campaign video by former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens that depicted him hunting members of the Republican party who he deemed inadequately conservative.
The video was posted Monday morning and showed Greitens with a pump-action shotgun while he talked about hunting for RINOs, an acronym for “Republicans in name only.” It then showed Greitens with a group of men in tactical gear breaking down the door of a house, throwing a smoke bomb and entering the room.
The video quickly drew backlash from across the political spectrum as people denounced it for inciting violence in an era where public figures are frequently the target of death threats and in the aftermath of two high-profile mass shootings that have spurred Congress to take action on preventing gun violence.
By Monday afternoon, the video was removed from Facebook.
“We removed this video for violating our policies prohibiting violence and incitement,” said a spokesman for Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
Greitens then posted a link on Facebook to a Washington Post page that contained the full video.
The video was “flagged” on Twitter, meaning that viewers who went to Greitens’ tweet were met by a warning and had to opt-in to seeing the video.
“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior,” the warning reads. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
The video was not removed from YouTube because it did not violate the platform’s community guidelines. Ivy Choi, a spokeswoman for YouTube, said the video was not classified as an ad on YouTube.
“While this video does not violate our Community Guidelines, it is not monetizing nor running as an ad,” Choi said.
Greitens is not the first U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri who has violated social media guidelines with their campaign content.
In January, YouTube removed a campaign ad by U.S. Rep. Billy Long that contained false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In February, Twitter suspended the campaign account of U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler because she attacked a transgender swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania. Her account remains suspended because Hartzler refused to remove the tweet.
Conservatives have complained of censorship from the large social media companies as the red meat messaging they send to their political base has bumped up against the community guidelines of the Silicon Valley giants. There have been efforts to create conservative social media sites, but they have been met with mixed success.
This story was originally published June 20, 2022 at 2:47 PM with the headline "Social media companies take down, flag Greitens’ people-hunting video."
