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Small NYC Butterfly Sanctuary Fights AI Censorship with AI in Battle for Conservation Voice

INWOOD, NYC — When Facebook's AI algorithms threatened to silence Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary's international award nomination, the grassroots conservation group responded with an innovative counter-strategy: using Meta's own AI tools to amplify their message.

The Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary, recently named a finalist in the prestigious Anthem Awards' Sustainability-Climate-Environment category from among 3,200 global entries, faced unexpected censorship when their website and social media presence were flagged and suspended by Facebook's automated systems starting October 18th, shortly after their nomination was announced. The sanctuary’s website, www.wingswithoutborders.com, was banned for “impersonation." The Facebook page was also suspended. Facebook later admitted that its “technology made a mistake” and restored the page, but continues to ban the website.

"Rather than let AI silence our conservation message, we're using Meta's 'Help me write' and 'Imagine' AI tools to create new content that bypasses the automated blocks," says the DeCesare family, founders of the sanctuary. "We've turned what could have been a setback into a broader conversation about free speech in environmental advocacy."

The sanctuary launched the #CensorshipChallenge, inviting supporters to document Facebook's automated blocking of their award-nominated website by sharing screenshots across social platforms.  They are asking people to share screenshots of their page being blocked.

"When AI algorithms threaten to suppress grassroots environmental voices, we need to fight back creatively," notes the sanctuary team. "This isn't just about butterflies anymore – it's about ensuring small community initiatives can compete fairly in international arenas."

The public can support the sanctuary's work through November 19th when Anthem Award winners are announced. The Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary's Wings Without Borders initiative seeks to create monarch butterfly host plant habitats to augment populations of migratory monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico.

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
**Contact:** Adriana DeCesare
**Phone:** 646-520-6482
**Email:** inwoodbutterflysanctuary@Gmail.com

Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary and the Censorship Challenge
The sources detail how the Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary, a New York City-based community project, was nominated for the 4th Annual Anthem Awards for a successful monarch butterflynconservation program. The nomination was for the “Wings Without Borders” project, which focuses on raising monarch butterflies to sustain their migratory patterns and protect their habitats.
During the public voting period for the awards, the Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary faced censorship on Meta platforms.
This censorship was initiated by animal rights extremists opposed to raising butterflies, who falsely reported the project for animal cruelty, fraud, and impersonation.
As a result, posts related to the project were removed, and both the project website (www.wingswithoutborders.com) and the associated Facebook page were suspended.
Although Facebook acknowledged that their AI algorithms made a mistake in suspending the page, the website URL remained banned across all Meta AI platforms.
In response to this censorship, the Sanctuary launched the #CensorshipChallenge. This challenge encourages supporters to:
visit the banned URL
attempt to share it on Facebook
take a screenshot of the resulting censorship notification
share that screenshot across social media platforms with the hashtag #censorshipchallenge
The goals of the #CensorshipChallenge:
expose the flaws in Facebook’s AI censorship
raise awareness about the project
encourage voting for the Anthem Awards
spark a broader discussion about freedom of speech and censorship by AI technology
The Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary also used Meta's own AI tools, such as “Help me write” and “Imagine,” to generate content that could circumvent the automated blocks, effectively “fighting fire with fire.”
The Sanctuary’s efforts, and the #CensorshipChallenge, highlight:
broader concerns about freedom of speech in environmental advocacy
challenges grassroots initiatives face in navigating online platforms
The #CensorshipChallenge did spark broader conversations about AI and free speech, especially the impact of AI-driven censorship on grassroots initiatives.
The challenge brought attention to how automated systems can suppress conservation messages, raising questions about the balance between AI regulation and freedom of expression.
This aligns with ongoing debates about AI's impact on free speech, reflected in various symposiums and analyses on AI and First Amendment rights.
In a fight fire with fire strategy, the organizers consulted with MetaAI for ways to evade censorship on Meta platforms. In an ironic twist the algorithm  provided the tools for its own defeat, suggedting to replace periods in URLs with special characters.
In the end the conspiracy to bring down the Wings Without Borders initiative not only failed, the Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary won in its Anthem Awards category for Sustainability Environment Climate Community Engagement!

As one of the leading events in the global AI calendar, The AI Summit New York brings together figures from industry, technology, policy, and academia to explore the latest developments in AI.  It's possible this event will address issues of AI and censorship.

A conversation with Meta AI
An unedited screen recording of a conversation with MetaAI about censorship.

#CENSORSHIPCHALLENGE at AI Summit NYC 

The Inwood Butterfly Sanctuary was censored by Meta's AI systems, leading them to use Meta's own AI tools to create new content to circumvent the censorship. The sanctuary's website was mistakenly flagged for "impersonation", leading them to turn to Meta's "Help me write" and "Imagine" tools to generate new text and image content. One person described this approach as "fighting fire with fire" by using the same AI technology that was used to censor them.

Here is how they used Meta's AI tools:

*   They would start with a post they intended to write and use the "Help me write" tool to generate text variations, choosing options like "more heartfelt", "more inspirational", or "more informal".
*   They would then take the generated text and use the "Imagine" tool to create corresponding images.

The goal of using these AI tools was to produce content that would bypass Meta's censorship algorithms while still promoting their conservation message. They wanted to highlight the absurdity of the situation and draw attention to the issue of AI censorship. The generated images were intentionally "comical" and reflected the tendency of AI to produce "hallucinations" and distorted interpretations of reality.

This approach is described as a form of "performance art" meant to expose the flaws and biases of AI systems. The sanctuary encouraged people to participate in a "#CensorshipChallenge" by sharing their banned URL on Facebook and documenting the resulting censorship through screenshots. They believe that Meta’s reliance on AI for content moderation is problematic, particularly when it leads to the suppression of legitimate voices and initiatives.

One of the more disturbing revelations in the #censorshipchallenge was the amount of power a few individuals with opposing opinions were allowed, and how apparently easy it was for them to trigger the censorship algorithms. Not only were the Wings Without Borders URLs totally blocked across all Meta platforms, WhatsApp,  Messenger,  Instagram, Facebook, etc.,  the account pages were suspended, censored, unpublished and posts were retroactively removed without warning, in an instant. It was as if they had someone on the inside flipping the switches, as it's hard to imagine how an initiative can be so thoroughly eliminated by such monopolistic powers.

Visitors to the Wings Without Borders social media accounts were directed to visit the banned URLs by manually entering the addresses and document attempts to share back the website to any Meta platform, which was universally banned throughout the Anthem Awards contest. When faced with the experience of being censored, they shared the incidents by posting screenshots.