A post is circulating on social media about alleged censorship on Facebook, as the platform allegedly deleted the account of British scientist Richard Dawkins after he referred to female boxers at the Paris Olympics as men. In fact, Facebook temporarily removed Dawkins’ account because it was hacked.
In Estonia, the claim was picked up by the website Objektiiv on August 12. „Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins announced on social media on August 10 that Facebook deleted his account without warning or explanation. Presumably, the reason was his view that men should not be allowed to box with women in the Olympics. Dawkins exposed Facebook censorship in X and confirmed that he was not told why it was done,“ wrote Objektiiv.
According to Facebook, Objektiiv’s post has reached about 7,700 users and has been shared 92 times.
The news was prompted by Dawkins’ post on X on August 10, in which he hinted at the possibility of censorship: „My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?“ Dawkins wrote on his X account on August 10.
Dawkins has since deleted this post.
One of the athletes mentioned in the shared text was Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, one of the most talked about athletes at the Paris Olympics. Faktikontroll has previously debunked claims that Imane Khelif is „transgender“ or „a man masquerading as a woman.“
On August 2, Dawkins wrote on X that Facebook had blocked his account: „My Facebook page has been deleted for no apparent reason, and we have not received a response through @meta or @facebook for a resolution. Was it something I said?“. This post received more than 110,000 views.
On August 10, Dawkins tweeted (this post was also deleted, but an archived copy remains) that his Facebook page was still unavailable: „My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course, my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?“.
This last post went viral. According to archives, it received at least 19 million views and 9,000 shares before being deleted. The tweet was also spotted by Elon Musk, owner of social network X, who shared Dawkins’ post and wrote: „Wow“. Then, various theories and claims about „Facebook censorship“ began to spread.
According to Dawkins, he wrote the original post on X, not Facebook. Dawkins has not claimed that his Facebook account was removed specifically because of his tweet about Khelif. He wrote in X on August 2 that he did not know why his page was deleted, and a week later suggested that some of his statements may have been the reason.
On August 10, when the news of the deletion of Dawkins’ account and the alleged censorship began to spread, Dani Lever, Director of Public Relations and Communications at Meta, commented on the situation.
„This is not what happened. Mr. Dawkins’ account appears to have been compromised, or hacked, so we took action to secure the account and prevent wrong usage of the page. That step was taken on July 30th. His last post was on July 25th, before the Olympics even started, and was not even topical to boxing. This action had nothing to do with any content Mr. Dawkins posted, and we are in the process of restoring the page as soon as it is secured. While we were focused on securing the page, we regret that we weren’t able to communicate this to the account holder more promptly,“ Lever wrote in X.
Later that day, Lever responded directly to Dawkins’ tweet: „The removal of your Page was a precautionary measure due to indications of potential compromise, not due to any issues with the content you posted. We are actively working to secure the page and will restore it promptly once we ensure its safety. It’s possible you were not notified promptly while we were focused on securing your page, and we apologize for that.“
While it is theoretically possible that Dawkins’ Facebook account was temporarily removed for another reason, no other theory has been confirmed.
There are plenty of examples of similar situations to Facebook, where the owners of hacked accounts lose access to their accounts. For example, in March 2023, Metro published an article titled „Meta is deleting the Facebook and Instagram accounts of hacking victims – and with them, years of irreplaceable memories“.
So there is no reason to say that Facebook deleted Dawkins’ page because of his X tweet in which he referred to the athlete Imane Khelif as a man.
Verdict: partly false. British scientist Richard Dawkins called two Olympic athletes „men masquerading as women“ on social network X on July 29. On August 2, Dawkins announced on X that Facebook had blocked his account. Claims then circulated that Facebook had blocked Dawkins’ account because of his X post. A representative of Meta publicly explained that Dawkins’ account was automatically taken down because the algorithm detected a possible hack of Dawkins’ Facebook page, and the temporary removal of the page was not related to the content of the posts on his account. Dawkins’ account was restored no later than August 11.
