Facebook, Instagram Apologised for Censoring #EndSARS Protests

Facebook and Instagram have apologised for wrongly tagging content linked to peaceful anti-police brutality demonstrators in Nigeria as fake news.

According to Ime Archibong, Facebook spokesperson, “we are aware that Facebook’s automated systems were incorrectly flagging content in support of #EndSARS, and for this we are deeply sorry. This issue has since been resolved, and we apologize for letting down our community in such a time of need.

“There were errors in our system where a post that mentioned the Sars virus that was correctly debunked by our third-party fact checkers was ultimately incorrectly connected to posts about EndSARS, so the EndSARS posts were inaccurately labelled as false

It would be recalled that VICE news reported how Facebook and Instagram falsely tagged content linked to peaceful anti-police brutality demonstrators in Nigeria as fake news, according to.

The issue was flagged by multiple social media users on Wednesday who said that Facebook and Instagram were filtering out mentions of the hashtags related to the protests, which have been trending in recent days.

The protests, which have lasted for almost two weeks so far, began as demonstrations against Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS)—a unit of the Nigerian police force that has been accused of alleged extrajudicial killings and the indiscriminate extortion of young people. Now, however, they have morphed into broader protests against general police brutality and the Nigerian government.

On Tuesday night, the Nigerian military opened fire on peaceful anti-police brutality demonstrators in Lagos on Tuesday night, killing a reported 15 people and injuring hundreds.

Users who attempted to post content with the #EndSARS hashtag on Wednesday were met with an alert saying that there was “false information in your post.”

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to VICE News that the #EndSARS hashtag had been incorrectly flagged.

“We are aware of an issue where some posts in support of #EndSARS are being incorrectly flagged as false in our systems. We are working quickly to resolve this,” the spokesperson said.

Facebook did not say how the issue arose, how many people it affected, or when it would be fixed. It is not the first time that Facebook has inaccurately flagged content from activists. Just last week, Facebook admitted that it marked posts by the Sunrise Movement group in Sacramento as going against its Community Standards by mistake, again without explaining how that happened.