Update: Andy Stone, whose Twitter bio says he works in communications at Facebook’s parent company, Meta, called the incident “an error” on Twitter and said Facebook had restored Heroes of Liberty’s ad account.

This should not have happened. It was an error and the ad account’s been restored.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) January 4, 2022

Facebook permanently suspended the ads account of Heroes of Liberty, a conservative children’s book publisher, claiming the company’s ads violated the tech giant’s policies against “Low Quality or Disruptive Content.”

“We began investing in Facebook four months before we launched our first book,” Bethany Mandel, Heroes of Liberty editor and board member, told Fox Business. “We invested most of our marketing budget on the platform, and now our budget (the money we’ve already spent), as well as our assets and data are gone. Marketing-wise we are back in square one, financially it’s even more challenging.”

Facebook initially banned Heroes of Liberty’s Facebook Ads account on Dec. 23, according to Mandel, claiming the account “didn’t comply with our policy on Low Quality or Disruptive Content.”

Heroes of Liberty appealed the suspension but was denied and informed the account would be permanently banned.

“You can no longer advertise with this ad account and its ads and assets will remain disabled. This is our final decision,” Facebook’s message to Heroes of Liberty read, according to Fox Business.

Thread: My new children's book publishing company, @HeroesOfLiberty, was dealt a real blow going into the New Year, when we were banned by Facebook. We’re a new literary start-up that publishes quality illustrated biographies of great Americans. https://t.co/V4tTEfQbAC

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) January 3, 2022

Mandel later tweeted she suspected a small group of users reported the ads so that Facebook would disable Heroes of Liberty’s account.

“We had a number of negative comments on the posts and we think they reported our content. They were triggered by a children’s book that portrays Ronald Reagan as a hero,” she said. “But this was not their decision. It was Facebook’s decision, they went along with them it seems.”

Facebook did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Mandel told Fox Business she plans on avoiding predicating her business on major social media platforms going forward.

“We learned our lesson, and won’t risk building our business relying on the whims of Big Tech again,” she said. “We are very happy with our initial decision to create a subscription model that will allow us to create a more meaningful one-on-one connection with families that can’t be disrupted by a censor.”

Heroes of Liberty publishes children’s books intended to provide a “wholesome patriotic alternative” to the current child literature market. These include biographies of prominent conservative figures, such as former President Ronald Reagan and economist Thomas Sowell.

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