A New York Post article that first revealed shady financial dealings at the Black Lives Matter nonprofit was suppressed online by Facebook Friday, even as billionaire Mark Zuckerberg promised to end censorship on the platform he co-founded, The Post has learned.
This comes even as the group, commonly known as BLM, is now under investigation by the Justice Department over potential misuses of donations by its leaders.
The Post first wrote about a multi-million dollar real estate buying spree in April 2021, when the group’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors, a self-described Marxist, bought up four high-end homes in Georgia and California, spending $3.2 million.
Following news of the DoJ investigation, some users attempted to share the link to The Post’s original reporting but were met with a message reading: “You can’t share this link…Your comment couldn’t be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards.”
After being aware of the problem early Friday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook responded at 5:30 p.m. EST, saying: “This has been fixed and the link is shareable.”
By that time the story was freely shareable on the social platform. However, it’s not the first time Facebook has suppressed The Post’s reporting.
The same thing had happened shortly after the story was first published in 2021, when Facebook prevented its users from sharing the link on its platform.
The social media platform also censored this newspaper’s story on former first son Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, in order to curry favor with the Biden administration, according to a report by the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the weaponization of government last year.
The FBI warned major US tech companies ahead of The Post’s first reports on the laptop that Russian agents were preparing a strikingly similar document dump. Once our scoop materialized, Facebook executives discussed censoring the material in order to please what they assumed would be a Biden-Harris administration, the committee reported.
In a letter to the committee, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook parent company Meta, said the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor content, including stories on the laptop and COVID-19 related content in 2021.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote, adding that he vowed to do things differently in the future. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
However, Facebook is once again suppressing The Post’s initial BLM investigation — for from some users.
The story includes descriptions of the lavish homes Cullors bought. Among the homes was a “custom ranch” on the outskirts of Atlanta, which featured a private airplane hangar and runway, and a $1.4 million Topanga Canyon, California, property, which featured two buildings on a secluded road a few minutes’ drive from Malibu. Cullors has since sold both properties, according to public records.
At the time, Cullors said she had not used BLM funds to purchase the properties, but resigned a month after The Post’s story appeared.
Meta co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and former Twitter owner Jack Dorsey donated millions to initiatives connected to Cullors after she backed their battle for “net neutrality,” or who controls the Internet.
Cullors began lobbying for “net neutrality in 2014, raking in more than $5.5 million in donations from Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures, nonprofits controlled by Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna, according to public records.
The cash went to Dignity and Power Now, a non-profit started by Cullors, and Reform LA Jails, a California state political action committee she co-founded to lobby for civilian oversight of the LA Sheriff’s Department.
In 2020, Zuckerberg also pledged $10 million to groups fighting for racial justice, including Black Lives Matter.
Cullors gained national prominence in 2013, when she and two other activists protested the not-guilty verdict against George Zimmerman, who shot dead Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager in Florida.
Black Lives Matter protests erupted again in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd in May. He died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck during his arrest. After Floyd’s death, the group received a windfall of more than $90 million from corporations and progressive philanthropists.
Cullors did not respond to multiple requests for comment Friday.
