Kyle Rittenhouse, pictured in court on November 19, may rejoin Facebook and Instagram, Meta announced on Wednesday.
Sean Krajacic / AP
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Sean Krajacic / AP
Kyle Rittenhouse, pictured in court on November 19, may rejoin Facebook and Instagram, Meta announced on Wednesday.
Sean Krajacic / AP
Kyle Rittenhouse is free to log back into his Facebook and Instagram accounts and his supporters are once again free to praise him across the platforms.
Officials at Facebook parent company Meta said Wednesday that they reversed Rittenhouse’s policy of suspending social media accounts and blocking his name in certain searches in August 2020, a few days after he shot two people dead and wounded another during protests for racial justice last summer in Kenosha, Wis.
Last month, Rittenhouse was acquit all counts, including three counts of murder and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment.
“Following the Kenosha ruling, we’ve retracted the restrictions we had in place to limit search results from returning content related to key terms including Kyle Rittenhouse,” said Andy Stone, spokesman. Meta member said in a statement.
For over a year, searches for the shooter’s name didn’t come up, pulling up blank pages. And links to websites that collect donations for his legal representative lead nowhere. But those barriers are now gone.
“While we will still remove content commemorating the deaths of those killed in Kenosha, we will no longer remove content praising or supporting Rittenhouse that is of public interest to the public,” Stone said. to court.
If he chooses to return to Instagram or Facebook, Rittenhouse can create a new account or ask Meta to restore an existing account, but will be subject to their respective community standards.
As of Wednesday afternoon, he has yet to rejoin both platforms.
Several news outlets, conservative lawmakers, gun rights activists and far-right groups have made the decision to block Facebook searches related to Rittenhouse. And the company has faced backlash after its former director of Hazardous Organizations and Individuals, Brian Fishman, said an internal investigation designated the deadly encounter as “batch shooting. ”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called the Rittenhouse policy an “alarming measure of censorship” and said Facebook had threatened Rittenhouse’s right to due process.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) echoed similar views just hours after a grand jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts.
“Big tech thinks they’re above the law,” said Hawley, a vocal critic of the social media giants, told Fox Enterprise. “They decided on this case months ago, seeking to deny Kyle Rittenhouse’s claim of innocence and censor those who disagree.”
On Wednesday, Meta officials acknowledged it would be difficult to keep track of new comments about Rittenhouse and his victims because of the level of widespread interest in him and his acquittal. The company is encouraging users to report content that violates their terms of service.
Editor’s Note: Facebook is one of NPR’s recent financial backers.
