Facebook says it made a mistake in blocking Wes Cook Band's 'patriotic' song about the American flag

Wes Cook Band/YouTube

A still from Wes Cook Band's "I Stand For the Flag" video.

• Country band Wes Cook Band was unable to pay for Facebook ads to promote their new song "I Stand For the Flag" after the music video was flagged as political content.
• The Nashville-based band said their song is patriotic and not political, and claimed Facebook's algorithm is politically biased.
• Facebook reviewed the video and said it made an "error."

Facebook has said it made an error after preventing Nashville-based country band Wes Cook Band from advertising their new song because it was deemed as political content.

The song, "I Stand For the Flag," came out on Monday, and the band were going to promote it with advertising on Facebook. But Facebook's algorithm flagged the video as political content and rejected the request.

The band spent this week protesting, stating "we believe patriotism is not political" on their Facebook page. They also told Fox News that they believe Facebook's algorithms are themselves politically biased.

"It has to do with a level of political bias we feel that Facebook has within their algorithms," the band's fiddle player Nathan Stoops told Fox.

"You know those are the tools that they use to determine whether content fits within certain parameters on their site, and if those algorithms are programmed to reject content like 'I Stand for the Flag' then I think that would give a lot of Americans the right to be offended by that level of bias within a company that purports itself to be politically neutral."

On Friday morning, Facebook admitted that an "error" had occured, and said it is working to improve its policies.

Facebook clarified to Business Insider exactly why the video was blocked from being promoted:

"We recently announced anyone running ads about political or other major national issues must include a 'paid for' label. After looking again, we determined that this ad doesn't need that label," a Facebook spokesman told Business Insider.

"While this is a new policy, and while we won't ever be perfect, we think knowing who is behind an ad is important, and we'll continue to work on improving as we roll it out."

Wes Cook Band said they were happy to have entered into a dialogue with Facebook, and hoped that their song could inspire people to "pursue productive, open and honest communication."