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Last September, British filmmaker Joshua Newton was set to re-release his 2009 film Beautiful Blue Eyes. The 2022 release was vital for Newton, as he had waited more than a decade to nevertheless participate in the worldwide edition of the film that had been missed before.
Roy Scheider starred in Newton’s film, and it ended up being his last role. Scheider, who is best known for betting on the beloved Jaws police leader who says, “You’re going to want a bigger boat,” played a New York cop. who discovers his separated son and tracks down the Nazi guilty of the murder of his circle of Holocaust family members. Because a camera didn’t work and broke some of Newton’s footage and Scheider died filming, Newton in the past thought he had lost his favorite edit. But more than a decade has passed, and Newton told Rolling Stone that, regardless, the AI generation is complex enough for the filmmaker to repair lost movie footage.
Delighted to put this cup of his mystery in front of the public, Newton set out to announce the reissue on Facebook. But in the days leading up to the premiere, Newton told Rolling Stone that he won an email informing him that, at one event, “Facebook had banned filmmakers from selling or advertising” the film.
Following Rolling Stone’s report, Meta told Ars that the Facebook owner had reviewed the case and overturned the ban.
“We reviewed the classified ads and the page in question and decided that the app was created by mistake, so we lifted the restriction,” a Meta spokesperson told Ars.
Facebook moderators told Newton that his film was banned because the company’s advertising policy limited content that “includes direct or indirect claims or implications about a person’s race. “Because Newton’s film in the U. S. UU. se titled Beautiful Blue Eyes, Facebook moderators banned its promotion on Facebook ads, reading the headline as an allusion to race.
Newton’s production company has not responded to Ars’ requests for comment since Meta lifted the ban.
According to Newton, after receiving the email informing him that he would not be allowed to advertise his film on Facebook, he appealed the decision. Rolling Stone shared the message sent via Facebook in reaction to Newton’s call, informing the filmmaker that publicity and even trailers were “permanently restricted. “
“After a requested review of his Facebook account, we showed that he was not in compliance with our advertising policies or other standards. You can no longer promote it using Facebook products. This is our final decision,” the message read.
Newton’s film is now screened in many theaters that re-release Jaws on IMAX. It is a double film that is designed as a birthday party for Scheider through his best-known and greatest leading roles. Newton said he was disgusted that Facebook allegedly limited the reach of his film. Rolling Stone noted that Facebook has rarely taken such action on movie content reviews, and found another example in 2020 when a pro-Trump documentary was censored before the election.
“Every decent, sane human being on this planet is alarmed by Meta-Facebook’s ban on advertising a Holocaust-like movie,” Newton told Rolling Stone. “Mark Zuckerberg has created a monster that has no control. It’s another thing for Meta-Facebook workers to check the flag and protect it, knowing full well that the name is non-discriminatory and that the film is similar to the Holocaust.
Newton told Rolling Stone that he is considering legal action against Facebook, but Meta told Ars that all restrictions on his film’s Facebook page and classified ads have been lifted.
While resolved, Newton’s case adds another point of insight to the ongoing controversy over invalid censorship that has been taking hold at Facebook for years, with the government increasingly pressuring Facebook to bolster content moderation and the general public being more commonly about why and when safe content is restricted.
For years, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the position that Facebook does not censor any offensive speech, a policy that would make certain filmmakers like Newton never have to worry about how to advertise their films without Facebook.
Recently, new data about Facebook’s content moderation decisions were publicly shared. Last week, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed through its editorial board after emails shared in court showed how Facebook and other tech corporations coordinate directly with the federal government to remove what is removed. The WSJ board asked Facebook to post more emails so the public can better perceive the government’s role in Facebook’s moderation practices.
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