On June 14, Smith posted a rant on Twitter and Instagram, asserting that her Facebook account had been “banned” from posting content for “a few days”, and complaining about “Big tech and government censorship”.

Incidentally, Instagram is owned by the same parent company as Facebook, ‘Meta’.

Several journalists reached out to Meta for a comment, and it turns out that Smith’s Facebook page has several administrators, and one of those administrators was temporarily suspended, not Smith’s account or Smith’s page. In other words, any of the other administrators were able to post.

One comment that has been circulating, as in Gerson’s linked comment above, is that the suspension of the administrator is because the administrator is also the administrator of some 300 other Facebook pages, raising questions as to why one of Smith’s social media team members would be running so many different pages. (That said, the exact origin of the ‘300 pages’ claim appears to be unclear at this moment.)

In the mean time, various commentators, including political scientist Duane Bratt, pointed out that while Smith is complaining about the ‘censorship’ interfering with her ability to communicate with her constituents, she herself is well-known for having blocked large numbers of Albertans.

This was a conversation Ryan Jespersen had with her in October, suggesting that, as Premier of Alberta, she needed to address access differently. Her answer was that she agreed, and had already told her team. “Don’t call me an f, don’t call me a c, and don’t call me a b, and if we can stay away from those, then you won’t be blocked.” However, by most accounts, she has continued to maintain a large and liberal approach to blocking, and RJ reminded her of that last week, suggesting a clean slate. Her response was that it’s a ‘good idea’, and she’ll talk to her social media team.

To date, there’s no reason to think that any meaningful number of the many people she has blocked (most of whom probably didn’t call her an f, b, or c) have been unblocked.