As pro-Bernie Facebook groups go offline, conspiracy theories abound

Half a dozen pro-Bernie Sanders Facebook groups suddenly went dark Monday, prompting a flood of conspiracy theories that the sites had been targeted in an act of political dirty pool.

The groups — including Bernie Believers, Bernie Sanders is my HERO and Bernie Sanders or Bust — are accessible today, the apparent casualty of a non-partisan glitch.

“A number of groups were inaccessible for a brief period after one of our automated policies was applied incorrectly,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “We corrected the problem within hours and are working to improve our tools.”

The temporary outage, though, prompted a flood of theories on Reddit, ascribing sinister or partisan motives on the part of Facebook or the Vermont Senator’s rival, Hillary Clinton.

“Politically inconvenient opinions being vaporized from major internet hubs like Facebook and Twitter have been happening for years,” asserted one writer, identified as TheClockStrikesXIII.

Update: Historian Rick Perlstein, who literally wrote the book on Richard Nixon, playfully suggests that this may be the work of Donald Trump confidante and Nixon advisor Roger Stone.

https://twitter.com/rickperlstein/status/725046356545425408

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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