The discovery was brought to attention by multiple Iranian journalists who found out that their accounts and posts of Soleimani had been removed from Instagram. Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, stated that "...the company removes accounts run by or on behalf of sanctioned people and organizations" in compliance with U.S. law. (Paul, A., 2020). Qassem Soleimani was a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who were assigned as a terrorist organization in April 2019 by the U.S. government.
This leads to the debate on whether these actions comply with the First Amendment in the United States Constitution. Because Facebook is a private company, they are free to create their own rules about acceptable content to be published on their site. However, the United States Constitution guarantees the freedom of the press in its first amendment. This includes government censorship, which is what Facebook is doing by removing content from their site.
In my opinion, having your posts removed for not siding with your country is scary. What's especially scary is the fact that the posts and accounts that were removed from Instagram and Facebook were not geographically made in the United States, they were made in Iran. A company in the U.S. decides it's okay to remove posts and accounts from Iran because they disagree with the U.S. government's view on Soleimani.
Related Article:
Facebook's Soleimani Ban Flies in Face of First Amendment
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