Meta is doing President Donald Trump yet another solid in the wake of his federal immigration agents shooting dead two American protesters in the street, by censoring a site that identifies them.
The self-styled “accountability initiative,” ICE List, came to widespread public attention earlier this month after the Daily Beast reported that it had been handed details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees, including almost 2,000 frontline agents.
The leaked staff roster—which included names, roles, work emails, and phone numbers, and some resumé info—allegedly came from a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower outraged by the killing of unarmed mom, Renee Nicole Good, 37, by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, 43.
Ever since, ICE List—which says it identifies federal immigration officials because the Trump administration refuses to—has faced roadblocks in its attempts to do so, including a massive cyber attack hours after the Beast’s January 13 report.
Now ICE List is being censored by Meta, the owner of Facebook and Threads, just days after a group of as-yet unidentified Border Patrol agents manhandled and repeatedly blasted to death VA nurse Alex Pretti, 37, on Jan. 24.
Since Monday, whenever anyone attempts to post the website’s URLs—wiki.icelist.is and icelist.is—on those two Meta-owned social media platforms, they encounter an error message saying the links cannot be posted. On Facebook, it says any such post “goes against our Community Standards,” without giving any further explanation.
Meta’s censoring of ICE List comes after its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, has repeatedly cosied up to Trump, including contributing to his gaudy $400 million White House ballroom project. The site’s founder, Dominick Skinner, thinks the two are linked.
He told the Beast, “For six or seven months, you could post links to our sites on Meta platforms without any issue. This is an overnight change. It seemed to come directly after we posted a link asking for tips related to the murder of Alex Pretti.
“I believe that Mark Zuckerberg is in bed with the regime. He was sitting behind Trump at the inauguration. His algorithms have worked to shape people into right-wing followers. And Meta donated to the Trump Ballroom.
“I don’t believe that it’s somehow an accident that a company so deeply ingrained in this regime is suddenly blocking a website that actively fights against it.”
Skinner, who lives in the Netherlands, where he bases the site so it cannot be taken down by the U.S. government, added: “This isn’t the first time we have faced any kind of suppression by Meta.
“Quite regularly, our views on a post will only get a couple of hundred views, while we’re closing in on 200,000 followers. We even have numerous followers who tell us that they have to set notifications to see our posts at all.”
A spokesperson for Meta said that, according to its privacy policy, Meta removes content that shares or requests private information, whether on its services or through external links.
That includes personal contact information, personally identifiable information such as government IDs of law enforcement, military, or security personnel, or residential information.
The spokesperson said Meta had taken similar action in the past to restrict content or links that violate its standards on sharing or asking for private information. They added that if it identified any future instances of personally identifiable information (PII) being shared, it would “promptly take appropriate action in accordance with our policies and procedures to protect user privacy and ensure compliance with relevant regulations.”
But Skinner said, “We don’t share private information, and websites that do can still be shared on Meta’s social. I’ve tested sharing links from other people-search websites, and they work fine.
“So if that’s Meta’s policy, it only applies to us. You can even share the individual profiles of agents on Meta, and that’s not an issue, so their explanation doesn’t really hold much weight.”
