By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Facebook officials apologized Thursday for deleting Sarah Palin’s post criticizing the Ground Zero mosque, Politico reported.
Facebook’s automated system removed the post Thursday morning, likely because many Facebook users tagged it as hate speech.
“The note in question did not violate our content standards but was removed by an automated system,” a Facebook spokesman told Politico. “We're always working to improve our processes and we apologize for any inconvenience this caused.”
Palin quickly reposted the note, which called the planned 13-story mosque and community center “a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks.”
Below the reposted note, Palin explained that it had been “somehow unintentionally deleted by mistake or technical glitch.”
However, it appears the post disappeared because of an attack coordinated by Tumblr blogger Moneyries, who urged his readers to report it under Facebook’s “racism/hate speech” category.
“This is not really about ‘refudiating’ Sarah Palin,” Moneyries wrote after Palin put her note back up. “It was a social experiment to explore the boundaries of Facebook’s government-like Terms and Conditions and the power of the Tumblr community.”
Palin wasn’t the only national politician to speak out against the mosque this week.
Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote on his website Wednesday evening that the planned $100 million center is part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.”
“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” Gingrich wrote. “The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.”
In other mosque news, Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino said if he were elected Governor of New York, he would use eminent domain to halt the project and “make the site a war memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country.”
Paladino made the statement in a 30-second radio ad released last night. He is challenging Rick Lazio, another mosque foe, in the Republican primary for governor.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized Paladino's stance Thursday and said he had no chance of getting elected, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“This city is built on openness and tolerance and we’re not walking away from it,” Bloomberg added, according to the Journal. “I don’t care who’s governor.”
