Paper Doll Ensemble Facebook Page Gets Taken Down Amidst QAnon Sweep

A local theatre company in Philadelphia got caught up in a sweep done by Facebook to remove posts about QAnon, WHYY reports.

Last week, Grayce Hoffman found that her Facebook page, as well as the one for Paper Doll Ensemble, the theatre company she co-founded, were unavailable. She later found out that the theatre's other co-founders, Amanda Jensen and Sara Vanasse, were also removed from the social media site.

That's when Jensen suggested it may have been because the company hosted an event about Trump and QAnon. In December, the company held a Zoom event about "The Cult of Trump," a book by Steven Hassan.

Following the events at the capitol earlier this month, Facebook has begun more seriously reviewing, and removing, any posts advocating political violence, or sharing misinformation about the political climate. They are specifically targeting phrases such as "QAnon" and "Stop the Steal."

When Hoffman tried to get her account back, she was met with a message that read, "Your Facebook account was disabled because it did not follow our Community Standards. This decision can't be reversed."

"That's when I started to panic," she said. "How do I get an appeal? How do I contact anyone? Someone? A human being? If they looked at our page for 30 seconds they would know we are the exact opposite of what I think they thought our account was."

She then turned to Twitter and Instagram to rally supporters, and created a new personal Facebook account to rebuild the network. She also reached out to the press, which contacted Facebook, and got the original pages reinstated.

In an email, a Facebook spokesperson wrote, "We removed the page in error and have since restored the page as well as associated accounts. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Read more on WHYY.