Speculations are rife that the Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ posted to the social media site is prohibited. A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook, has debunked the rumors as fake news to Reuters.
Posts include a paragraph of text that begins: “Seeing Mark Zuckerberg talking and saying that posting of the Lord’s Prayer is against the policy I am appealing to all Christians to as Please Follow my lead and Post the Lord’ Prayer.”
For instance, the post with the hashtag #faith challenge ( here `4948590393411&type=3) has been shared over 500,000 times to Facebook.
The fake story is a resee of a rumor from the year 2020 as seen in the news coverage by WUSA9 Source here that explains the fiction behind the tale.
A search through Facebook’s Community Standards hardly produces any outright ban on the sharing of “The Lord’s Prayer.” The group “The Lord’s Prayer,” (here) which has a link in its “about” section still exists and can prove that Facebook welcomes the prayer.
Facebook defines hate speech “as a direct attack against people — rather than concepts or institutions— on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: ethnic origin, disability, religion, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender and serious diseases. We define attacks as violent or dehumanizing speech, communications depicting as less than, othering, insulting, scornful or dismissive, cursing and scapegoating, or name-calling and calls to segregation.
Responding to Reuters the social media giant Meta affirmed through an email that the posting of “The Lord’s Prayer” does not violate Meta policies.
VERDICT
I know it is a lie that Facebook has blocked “The Lord’s Prayer.” A representative of the Meta, that owns Facebook, also confirmed that the prayer is not against the policies of the social platform.