The publications of the French mayor’s office of Crac’h (Morbihan) highlighting the town’s religious heritage – Calvaries and crucifixes – have all been deleted from Facebook. A decision that the mayor cannot really account for.
Would Facebook wage a crusade … against crosses? That’s what the fate of the Facebook publications of the town hall of Crac’h, in the Morbihan, might suggest. As the local newspaper Le Télégramme reports, last December the urban team had launched a series of publications about the town’s crosses and crucifixes.
A publication series entitled “In the Heart of the Stones”… which was abruptly interrupted last Tuesday, May 18. “The publications about the Crac’h crosses and Calvaries disappeared from the news feed,” says Catherine Chantelot, deputy mayor of Crac’h. “It’s incomprehensible,” she continues, adding that all the publications in the series have been removed at once, as well as the three planned but not yet published. “This is something that people liked,” complains the assistant, who seems helpless in the face of the gigantic social network.
Unfortunately for Catherine Chantelot and Crac’h Municipality, no satisfactory explanation should clarify this story … if not for the coincidence of Facebook’s algorithm. As Le Télégramme notes, this kind of premature deletion is not unusual. Indeed, Facebook’s automatic moderation often censors photos of crucifixes or representations of Christ on the cross. The near-nudity of the latter or the violence of certain depictions of the crucifixion may indeed violate the publishing rules of the social network, which is very strict about the content of its users’ posts. All the worse for the cultural publications of the little mayor of Morbihan. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.