Health department back on Facebook

“The page was incorrectly removed and has been restored,” Facebook spokeswoman Jen Ridings wrote Tuesday in a reply to emailed questions from The Missourian.

For at least three weeks, people who went to the health department’s Facebook page got a message reading “This content isn’t available right now” that continued on to explain such issues usually occur because the owner only shared it with a certain group of people or the page was deleted.

That contributed to speculation that the county had pulled the plug on the page, including a question posted three weeks ago on another county Facebook page asking why the health department had deleted its page.

Health department Director Angie Hittson said earlier Tuesday, before the page was restored, that Facebook had taken the page down. She sent the company a message and said she received a reply that the matter was under review.

“I don’t know what happened,” Hittson said.

Hittson said she received a message about the account being reactivated Tuesday evening but hadn’t had a chance to look at the page further.

Even before being removed by Facebook, the health department appeared to be inconsistent at posting to Facebook compared with some other counties.

As of Wednesday evening, the health department’s last Facebook post was Aug. 2, when it put up a new cover photo. The last informational post had been July 27, when the department posted about seeking applicants for registered nurse positions.

For a time, the health department posted regularly about its walk-in COVID-19 vaccination clinic availability, but it most recently did that July 22.

It also posted county COVID-19 numbers earlier in the pandemic.

Instead, the department has posted case numbers on the official county website at franklinmo.org/covid19, Hittson said. The site also includes information about upcoming COVID-19 testing events and local businesses with regular testing.

The county health department Facebook page has 8,815 followers as of Wednesday. Some posts also are shared to other users’ pages, including 16 shares for the post seeking nurses, and are visible to others who do not directly follow the health department page.

Unlike Facebook, the county website is an official county government channel, Presiding Commissioner Tim Brinker said. “It’s an open platform for the public,” he said of Facebook.

The county previously posted some information about COVID-19 vaccination clinics on the Franklin County Government Center Facebook page but hasn’t since May 5. The government center page, which has 473 followers, hasn’t been updated at all since July 1.

The Jefferson County Health Department has posted eight COVID-19 related updates to its Facebook page in the past week, and smaller Gasconade County posted four.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has seen complaints about censoring potentially crucial health information. According to a February 2021 story in The Guardian, Facebook started preventing news sites in Australia from posting because of pending legislation in that country that would have forced Facebook and Google to negotiate with news companies for payment of content.

But Facebook’s move also prevented state health departments and a Melbourne hospital from posting, just as Australia was preparing for its COVID-19 vaccine rollout, The Guardian reported.