The Real Guns Facebook page was suspended today. Not a surprise, Facebook has been attacking the page and deleting posts for many months. With 2,000,000+ followers and likes, you would think it would deserve a little respect as Facebook, not us, made lots of money selling impressions to their advertisers.
The squeeze was subtle at first; blaming AI for deleting images of firearms that supported articles on RealGuns.Com, then reinstating them on appeal as an error in deletion. Each time they deleted a post, they also placed restrictions on page distribution and, for no logical reason, my personal page.
In addition to dead heading subsequent posts, I was barred from posting video, as well as joining or participating in Facebook groups, or messaging to a list. I am sure those actions on the part of Facebook were in no way related to my conservative political posts appearing on my personal page.
Again, all posts were reinstated… until about a month ago. Two posts were removed with the accusation they were offering firearms for sale, we were not, but this time they ignore the appeals we filed, violating their own written policies. So the removals were treated as accumulative.
We worked with humans from their customer support group. Some were friendly and attempted to help us get around AI scripts by adding other objects to the firearm photos that were not firearm related. On agent told us the site is flagged on their back end servers and were being scrutinized by both humans and software.
The whole purpose of the Facebook Real Guns page was to keep positive firearm information in public view. Again, 2,000,000+ followers seemed like good firearm publicity. Apparently it was, at least enough for Facebook to single us out, commercially and personally, an blatantly break their own rules.
I’m OK with this outcome. Facebook was so compromised in distribution, deletions and bogus policy, it never had commercial value for us. It was a lot of work and now I can unplug from brown shirt social media.
Joe,
Sorry but not surprised by Facebook’s actions. I had similar experiences with eBay when trying to sell the odd firearm accessory several years ago. In spite of talking to a human, pointing out identical items being advertised by other sellers and attempting to explain, for example, that an Aimpoint PRO was just a red dot sight, I had my listing privileges suspended under their “no assault weapon parts” restriction. Sadly, no amount of logic or good faith is sufficient to overcome the censorious new orthodoxy that now passes for discourse in America.
Sorry to hear that, Bill. Unfortunately, the people making firearm related decisions at Facebook are firearm illiterate, and making decisions based on frail human hysteria. Facebook is a habit worth kicking.