As of September 15, SMNI News’ Facebook page, the media wing of Pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, is unavailable with the URL displaying the message: “This content isn’t available right now.” The reason behind the unavailability remains unclear; it could be due to changed privacy settings or deletion of the page.
The inaccessible page, which had garnered around 2.3 million followers and 960,000 likes earlier this month, comes in the wake of a series of takedowns involving Quiboloy and his affiliated entities. In August, Quiboloy’s personal Facebook page was removed in accordance with Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy. The action was pursuant to US Executive Order 13818, under which Quiboloy faces sanctions for allegations of “serious human rights abuse.”
Notably, this order empowers the US government to target a wider range of persons involved in serious human rights violations, inclusive of those offering “technological support” to the sanctioned individuals.
This year has witnessed an escalating series of actions against Quiboloy’s online presence. In June, his YouTube channel was the first to be taken down, a move that initiated a series of removals of Quiboloy-owned assets post the EO’s enactment in December 2022. This was followed by TikTok removing Quiboloy’s account in July and YouTube further terminating other channels related to SMNI News, in adherence to US sanctions laws.
Rappler reached out to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, seeking clarity on whether SMNI News’ page was deleted, but no response has been received yet.
In response to the recent developments, the network has migrated to a new Facebook page, SMNI Public Affairs, terming it as their “current official page.” Lorraine Badoy, an SMNI host, and ex-NTF-ELCAC spokesperson encouraged followers to shift to this backup page on September 11.
The SMNI News network and its hosts have been criticized previously for disseminating propaganda and misinformation, and engaging in red-tagging government critics. Recently, journalist Atom Araullo filed a 2 million PHP damage lawsuit against SMNI hosts Badoy and Jeffrey Celiz for red-tagging him and his mother on their show Laban Kasama Ang Bayan.
