"The Post has collected more than 40 examples of Facebook removing emergency-related posts during at least 20 wildfires since June. The explanation: “you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.”"
"Around 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon, Lauri Hutchinson’s daughter ran inside yelling, “Fire.”
A column of gray smoke was rapidly ballooning from the remote Northern California town of Clearlake, directly across the lake from them. A retired firefighter married to a fire chief, Hutchinson grabbed her phone as her husband flipped on his fire radio. Dispatchers were calling for evacuations and for backup from neighboring counties. Minutes later, Hutchinson, who now works as a fire safety coordinator, posted what she knew about the Boyles Fire to her Lake County Fire Safe Council’s Facebook page, and kept threading updates.
Then she got a confusing message:
“Why did you delete that post?” A retired sheriff’s deputy asked. She hadn’t. But her post was gone, along with all of her real-time updates about evacuations and where the fast-moving Boyles Fire, which sparked near an apartment complex and quickly engulfed homes and cars, was heading."
Brianna Sacks reports for the Washington Post September 10, 2024.
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