Facebook on Friday night blamed a technical glitch for a mass removal of posts that the platform had said contravened its standards.
Storm Media, an online Chinese-language media company based in Taiwan, said on its Facebook page that it was blocked by Facebook from about 6pm on Friday, and so was unable to publish its reports on the platform.
Some people also found that articles published by Chinese-language online media firms Mirror Media, Up Media and Newtalk that they had shared on Facebook were also taken down.
The message Facebook gave users was that the posts had breached its regulations.
People said they were not sure whether the stories they had shared on Facebook were taken down after being reported by the fact checkers employed by Facebook or for reasons they did not know, and expressed the hope that it was simply a technical problem.
Late on Friday night, Facebook issued a statement saying that the posts were removed due to a technical problem, which had been resolved.
The removals had nothing to do with the content of the posts, it said.
It offered a “deep apology” to users for the inconvenience.
Facebook’s Taiwan office announced earlier this month that it would begin scrutinizing posts from Taiwan from the middle of November to prevent the platform from being used to spread disinformation in the run-up to the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections.
The move aims to protect the integrity of Taiwan’s elections, Facebook said.
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