On October 28, I attempted to “boost” my recent Facebook post that promoted my new book The Road to a Hunger-Free America (that post is replicated here). For those not familiar with Facebook (a form of ignorance I would heartily endorse), the boost function places your post before a much wider audience of viewers than most people would have as mere Facebook “friends.” A small fee and a short review process are required for Facebook to approve your boost. Within five minutes of submitting my request, I received a rejection notice with a boilerplate explanation that contained the following sentence:

My new book “The Road to a Hunger-Free America — Selected Writings of Mark Winne” is available at a 20% discount from bloomsbury.com/9798765132340 with discount code GLRBD8. L to R: Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh, Mark Winne, and Shana Mandradge.

“Your ad may have been rejected because it mentions politicians or is about sensitive social issues that could influence public opinion, how people vote and may impact the outcome of an election or pending legislation.”

I was given an opportunity to appeal their decision, which I did noting that yes, hunger is a “sensitive social issue” but not one I was taking a position on in my post. And even though the Mayor of Paterson, NJ appeared in the photo, there was no explicit or implicit attempt to support him or influence public opinion (he’s not even running for office). God-forbid that one might publicly suggest that hunger is not a desirable state of affairs, or that the chief elected official of a lower income city might be concerned about the food security of his citizens. But other than “Hunger” being in the book’s title, no clever, thinly disguised behavioral modification tricks were employed by the manipulative mastermind, Mark Winne.

Facebook’s AI Appeals Robot rendered a verdict in less time than it takes a hungry man to eat a cheese sandwich: “Appeal denied.” It then had the chutzpah to ask me if I was satisfied with the process and provided a little box in which to write a comment. Boiling over, I probably didn’t help my case by writing an expletive-laced comment describing how the CEOs of Meta/Facebook and the United States of America were probably in cahoots with each other. After all, keeping the lid on anything that speaks of dissent is clearly in the self-interests of those who have no need for democracy.

Given that 42 million Americans are staring into the abyss of a pretty lean November, it would be of little surprise that Trump, Zuckerberg, and their cronies are motivated to downplay or distract Americans from Republican efforts to inflict as much pain as possible on SNAP recipients. Refusal by this Administration to take care of the Nation’s most vulnerable–-the majority of SNAP recipients being elderly, children, and disabled—and callously shift the burden of nourishing the needy to the already over-burdened food banking community reaches new heights of unconscionability.

If Facebook is willing to squelch a benign attempt by a lowly author to sell a book about hunger, what lengths will it go to undermine the rising tide of discontent with a President who is corrupt, despotic, and immune to the sufferings of his own people.