After Hurricane Ian ripped through Florida several weeks ago, an apparel company owner in Georgia decided to print “Florida Strong” t-shirts to help raise money for the relief effort. However, he was stunned to have his ads rejected by Facebook for being a “political/social issue.”

The business owner went on to accuse the social media giant of flagging content that appears to be politically conservative, then making it virtually impossible for users to connect with a real human being in the company to resolve the problem.

“The issue is a longstanding issue. There are algorithmic programs that Facebook has said that flag certain products, that flag certain advertisements, individuals — and they hinder that,” the business owner told Fox News. “They have you reach out to them and say, ‘Hey, would you please allow this advertising to go forward?’ It doesn’t actually make mention of any political individual initiative, but most of the time it falls on deaf ears, or we do not get responses.”

Facebook is often accused of censorship by both sides of the political aisle, so it’s difficult to say if there’s any truth to these claims. However, it’s indisputable that Facebook needs to do a better job of connecting users who are experiencing content moderation issues with real customer service reps within the company to help prevent this kind of confusion.

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