December 19th, marks the day that five of the seven members of the “War on Corruption” team got unbanned. For two months, we had fought a losing battle just to obtain information as to why we had gotten banned in the first place. While, to this day, nobody associated with the platform knows why we had gotten banned, it does seem that this is a calculated and deliberate attack against the platform.
Yesterday, December 25th, like so many around the world, I had a day that was filled to the brim in events. Between exchanging gifts, family time, etc. Facebook wasn’t even on the forefront of my mind. Later in the evening, when I had finally gotten some time, I check my messages. As it would turn out, I had four new messages from the same individuals who had recently gotten unblocked from Facebook. Every one of these messages were informing me that their accounts, once again, had been blocked. You can imagine my dismay to this.
At this point, I decide to take a quick glance at my profile. Although I had not been online for the entire day, it too was blocked. The vague reason being that I had violated their community standards. However, it didn’t inform me as to how I violated these vague standards nor did it show me anything that I had posted that could had been a violation. At this point, I had my confirmation: Facebook is maliciously, willfully, and with full intent, targeting my platform and harassing those associated with it. Now this is something important and I am about to explain why.
You may, or may not, be aware of this: In 2012 Facebook placed itself into the stock market. This was good financially, but very bad for how Facebook is currently operating. Because they are in the stock market, they are no longer a private company. That’s also important to note. Being that they are no longer a private company, it is no longer a question as to rather or not they can simply run the show however they see fit. For example, in a private setting, your constitutional rights don’t mean a thing. For Facebook, who is now in the public setting, the coin flips. They can’t simply censor out your rights.
Unlike the first go around, those of us who have been shadow banned from the site, have opted to simply delete our profiles. In doing so, we have effectively destroyed our own platform, by force courtesy of Facebook and it’s tyrannical approach to freelance journalism. In the meantime, we continue to seek out others who have been targeted in this way, we continue our search for a civil rights attorney, with the hope of putting an end to the illegal activities being conducted by Facebook. Until that time, we still debate the final fate for the platform on Facebook. However, one thing is cemented: It will be removed at some point.
