A private Facebook page with nearly 30,000 followers called New Jersey Women for Trump was removed from the platform just days ahead of the election.
“People are really, really mad,” the co-director of New Jersey Women For Trump, Priscilla Confrey, said. “When you have that many people and they’re shut down, they feel silenced.”
The page with 29,000 followers was removed sometime Saturday afternoon without warning, according to NJ.com.
“It was a lot of work over the past year for a private group to just be shut down without notification,” Confrey said. “Three days before Election Day? That is absolutely appalling.”
President Trump also voiced his outrage, demanding that Facebook reinstate the page.
“.@Facebook Put them back NOW!” Trump tweeted Sunday.
.@Facebook Put them back NOW! https://t.co/eLgs5viXKp
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020
Confrey added that Facebook has previously flagged some of its posts for being problematic — for example, when concerning the coronavirus — but that she always deletes those posts from the page.
“I just think these companies, these social media groups, have too much power. They offer to you to open up a group on their social media platform, and you could have 30,000 members, and they shut it down without telling you anything,” she said.
A Facebook spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in a statement Sunday that the page had been restored.
“This group was removed in error and we have since restored it,” the statement read.
Trump also tweeted Sunday that the page would be “restored immediately” after an “enforcement error” from Facebook.
Being restored immediately. @Facebook stated that they made an “enforcement error”. Thank you! https://t.co/EJDJ0ztbT2
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020
