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Users complained that Facebook blocked their attempts to share stories published by popular anti-establishment blog Zero Hedge, citing the violation of community standards, 'abusive' content, and 'errors' among the reasons.UPDATE 2: Breitbart reports Facebook is now claiming Zero Hedge blacklist was 'a mistake'
"Over the weekend, we were surprised to learn that some readers were prevented by Facebook when attempting to share Zero Hedge articles," the publication wrote on Monday, calling the practice an "arbitrary act of censorship."
According to the blog, "virtually every attempt to share or merely mention an article, including in private messages, would be actively blocked" by Facebook with the explanation that the content breached the social network's community standards.
Some users on social media reported experiencing problems while trying to share Zero Hedge's stories on Facebook.
"Facebook has outright banned all posting of Zero Hedge links," right-wing commentator and host Paul Joseph Watson has tweeted.
Zero Hedge said that it didn't receive any notice from the tech giant, and its attempts to reach out to Facebook "have so far remained unanswered." The publication noted that some of its content may have been flagged by "triggered" readers. It also suggested that the Silicon Valley-based company may have decided to pull the plug on Zero Hedge as retribution for publishing stories critical of Facebook.
Bloomberg, which covered the story, said the social network didn't immediately respond to a comment request.
Mark Zuckerberg's company has come under fire from right-wing groups and public figures who accuse it of liberal bias and censoring conservatives. Last year, Facebook effectively banned controversial radio host Alex Jones and his show InfoWars, citing "hate speech."
In a similar fashion, the company suspended several prominent left-leaning anti-establishment pages, including groups tracking police brutality in the US.
Last month, Facebook, without any prior notice, promptly blocked four pages with millions of subscribers, run by Maffick Media, including 'In the Now' - for supposedly concealing the fact that they were partially funded by Russia. The pages have since been unblocked.
Launched in 2009, Zero Hedge is an anonymous anti-establishment blog. Its authors publish articles under the pen name Tyler Durden - a reference to the character from the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. The image of Durden, portrayed by Brad Pitt in the 1999 Hollywood adaptation, serves as the blog's logo on social media.
"We were especially surprised by this action as neither prior to this seemingly arbitrary act of censorship, nor since, were we contacted by Facebook with an explanation of what 'community standard' had been violated or what particular filter or article had triggered the blanket rejection of all Zero Hedge content," Zero Hedge explained, adding,UPDATE 13/03/2019: Many are not buying Facebook excuses on the Zero Hedge posting ban:"it is just as possible that Facebook simply decided to no longer allow its users to share our content in retaliation for our extensive coverage of what some have dubbed the platform's 'many problems', including chronic privacy violations, mass abandonment by younger users, its gross and ongoing misrepresentation of fake users, ironically - in retrospect - its systematic censorship and back door government cooperation (those are just links from the past few weeks)."Public figures, including Infowars Editor-at-Large Paul Joseph Watson and Thiel Capital Managing Director Eric Weinstein, also reported problems with posting Zero Hedge links.
The block prompted condemnation from President Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., MEP Nigel Farage, and others, with Trump Jr. declaring, "The censorship continues. How does @zerohedge's content not 'meet community standards?' FB doesn't agree with them and they hit the platform's obvious flaws at times. That's it and it's disgusting!"
The Facebook block, however, was eventually reversed, with a Facebook spokesman claiming the problem was a "mistake."
"This was a mistake with our automation to detect spam and we worked to fix it yesterday," claimed the spokesman. "We use a combination of human review and automation to enforce our policies around spam and in this case, our automation incorrectly blocked this link. As soon as we identified the issue, we worked quickly to fix it."
As reported by Bloomberg, "Since being founded in the depths of the financial crisis, Zero Hedge has built a dedicated following by serving up a mix of hardcore financial analysis and populist political commentary," and the blog is "known for its bearish bent and anti-establishment commentary."
Breitbart Tech reached out to Facebook for comment.
The incident added fuel to longstanding allegations that Mark Zuckerberg's company harbors a bias against conservative and anti-establishment voices. Many commenters online remained skeptical as to whether Facebook's actions against Zero Hedge were an honest mistake.
Zero Hedge confirmed on Wednesday that the bewildering ban was "reversed" and things went back to normal. The blog's authors noted that they don't know which stories Facebook branded as "spammy," as the social network still hasn't contacted them.

The biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity - and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.I was wrong.
~Niall Ferguson
Ilhan Omar has tried to walk back her scathing criticism of former president Barack Obama by tweeting a clip of her actual response to the reporter and accusing him of distorting her words, only to prove that he got it right.Sadly, Omar is getting a lesson in realpolitik. No matter how accurate her assessment of Obama is, if it goes against the Establishment narrative, she will be targeted by that Establishment. She said what she said, and they will beat her with it if she steps out of line again.
Calling herself "an Obama fan," Omar claimed she was contrasting the former US leader with President Donald Trump, claiming the reporter had "distorted" her words deliberately.
The only problem? The clip she tweeted confirms the reporter got her words right. We hear Omar saying Democratic leaders have "conducted themselves within the system" in shameful ways - separating families at the border and drone-bombing countries around the world, just like Trump. She says Trump's policies are bad but that "many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies, they just were more polished than he was."
And the line that has everybody talking is there, crystal clear: "We don't want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile," Omar says.
The Politico reporter she'd accused of malicious misquotation, Tim Alberta, was quick to claim he'd been vindicated.
Comment: For these cowboys, the 'frontier' never ended when they hit California.
The Spanish version of the report has additional details (machine translated by Moon of Alabama): Absolutely outrageous behavior in normal civilization, but S.O.P. for American spooks.