Reports emerged on X on Monday indicating that Mark Zucerkberg's Facebook had been censoring photos of Donald Trump, fist raised, face bloodied, after the assassination attempt against him. The photos were censored by third-party fact checkers who claimed that the photo had been altered. Facebook since admitted to censoring the photos in error.

The iconic photo, snapped by a photographer for the Associated Press, had been viral on social media before a copy of the photo was edited and circulated, which showed, erroneously, that Secret Service agents were "smiling as they surround[ed] him after the shooting." While that photo was censored, in the aftermath, the original was censored as well.

After backlash, Meta admitted that the warning was incorrectly applied and was meant only to apply to the altered image showing Secret Service agents smiling. The fact checkers, and their AI software, had determined that all images that resembled the AP original photo should be removed.

"This was an error. This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed and we apologize for the mistake," communications director for Facebook Dani Lever said.

Meta uses third-party fact checkers to police content on their site, and many of those services use AI to identify misinformation and disinformation. On Meta's page discussing the process, they write "We also use AI to scale the work of fact checkers by applying warning labels to duplicates of false claims, and reducing their distribution."

In a 2021 lawsuit from journalist John Stossel, it was revealed that Facebook's fact checkers suffer from severe left-leaning bias. Facebook has touted the "independence" of their fact checkers, but those fact checkers rely on "experts" who themselves have heavy biases. 

Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, PA on July 13 when a gunman opened fire on him and the crowd. Trump was hit in the right ear and was instantly surrounded by Secret Service agents. The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by Secret Service agents after he fired off eight shots, but not before he took the life of Corey Comperatore, who died while shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire.

As agents ushered Trump off stage, he rose up, raised his fist, and said "Fight! Fight! Fight!" It was of that moment that the photo was snapped.