Facebook silences Queensland schools in ‘news’ page scrub

Some of Queensland’s most prominent private schools are the latest victims of Facebook’s move to scrub hundreds of ‘news’ pages from its platform.

Southeast Queensland schools are fighting to have their Facebook pages restored 24 hours after the social media giant purged hundreds of news and community organisations from its platform.

Australians woke on Thursday to find large swathes of non-news pages in Australia banned as Facebook attempted to remove news content from its platform.

Essential services including Queensland Health and the Bureau of Meteorology were among the most high profile casualties of the ban – with those pages remaining offline for several hours before eventually being restored.

However, several Queensland schools which were caught up in the ban – including Marist College Ashgrove, Brisbane Girls Grammar, St Margaret’s, Somerville House and The Southport School – remain blocked.

“We have all reported this to Facebook, had no reply and our pages still remain shut,” a spokeswoman for Marist College said.

Marist College has had their Facebook page shut down.

Facebook’s move is in response to the government’s proposed media code legislation, which requires digital platforms to pay for news.

The ongoing purge of educational facilities have also affected universities, with the University of Southern Queensland’s page shut down along with QUT News, a page is dedicated to journalism produced by students at the University.

USQ spokeswoman Kirsten MacGregor said the university was “taken aback”.

“Our Facebook account is a rich source of great stories about our expertise, our student life, and the research with impact that’s under way at the University of Southern Queensland,” she said.

“But most of this content is produced by the talented storytellers and video producers in our USQ team. They may have the instincts of news journalists, but we are not a news organisation, so we’re somewhat taken aback by today’s events.

QUT Guild, a student union of QUT, was also wiped off Facebook.

The group runs events, social sport and student advocacy and more than 30,000 current and past students follow the Facebook page.

Bond University’s Facebook page was also affected by the changes.

CPL, one of Queensland’s largest disability charities with 10,000 people in Queensland and Northern New South Wales, is also battling to have its page restored.

A spokeswoman said CPL used its page “to raise awareness of people with disability and promote social inclusion”.

“In the past 24 hours, CPL has been unable to share the stories of people with disability across social media,” she said.

“Prior to Facebook’s shutdown, hundreds of clients used our page for access to information, updates and good news stories.”