Facebook censors Roger Stone’s pages and accounts

Ryan Fournier took to Twitter Wednesday, tweeting: "BREAKING: Facebook and Instagram have just disabled the accounts of Roger Stone. This an outrageous display of censorship. Pardon Roger Stone!"

Facebook's head of security, Nathaniel Gleicher, condemned the act of artificially increasing engagement for political reasons on the social media platform, saying that "it doesn't matter what they're saying, and it doesn't matter who they are," according to Reuters.

"We expect we're going to see more political actors cross this line and use coordinated and inauthentic behavior to try to influence public debate."

While the taking down of these profiles is likely to anger prospective Trump voters in the upcoming presidential debate, Facebook has come under pressure by a flurry of advertisers who are boycotting the social media giant, demanding that the platform do more to stomp out "hateful" and "divisive" messages.

Fifty-four Facebook accounts and 50 pages were removed, which included fake accounts. Facebook officials added that they took down Stone's Stone Cold Truth Facebook page, which had garnered 141,000 followers. The accounts, in total, had spent more than $300,000 in advertisements in the last few years, Reuters added.

Stone was convicted in 2019 for process crimes amid the now-debunked Russian collusion investigation.

"I am being censored by Facebook and Twitter because my social media postings expose the truth regarding the now discredited Mueller investigation and the Russian Collusion hoax as well as the unfairness of my trial in 2020 to the extent possible without violating the protective seal left in place by the court and because I am an outspoken supporter of President Trump," Stone wrote.

According to warrant documents released in April, the FBI noted that one of Stone's assistants shared in 2018 that "he purchased a couple hundred fake Facebook accounts as part of this work."

Graphika analyst and disinformation specialist, Ben Nimmo, said that the network of Stone's pages and profiles were most active around 2016 and 2017, addressing how Wikileaks had exposed the Democratic emails as part of the Russian interference hoax.

"The inauthentic accounts were amplifying various Stone assets, like his page, or advertising one of his books," Nimmo added.

Stone has been on a quest to receive a pardon from Trump before he reports to prison in just 5 days.

Trump said that he believed Stone was treated unfairly, with his attorney general attempting to get Stone a lighter sentence. This resulted in four prominent prosecutors resigning from the case.