A California Democratic gubernatorial candidate said Instagram removed his post in which he called incumbent Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom a “weanie baby,” Fox News reported late Wednesday.
Kevin Paffrath, a real estate agent and social media personality known as Meet Kevin, told Fox News that Instagram briefly removed his post because it violated their guidelines. (RELATED: Conservatives Launch New Advocacy Group To Fight Back Against Woke Mobs, Cancel Culture)
“We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass, and repeated unwanted messages,” Instagram’s community guidelines state.
In a follow-up video, Paffrath said he received $36,000 within 24 hours, which he called “mind-blowing” for his campaign.
“If shaming and degrading is associated with calling someone a weanie baby, then I’ve got to watch what I’m saying on YouTube too because we call people ‘weanie babies’ all the time,” Paffrath said. “I mean this is like 3-year-old language here.”
He called it “crazy,” adding, “At what point does this private platform taking control of what’s on their content and moderating their content turn into political censorship?”
The identical Facebook post had never been taken down, according to Fox News. A spokesperson told Fox News that the Instagram post was erroneously taken down and that they restored it almost immediately once it was made known.