Admins unclear why Whale Spotting Tasmania Facebook group disappeared without a trace
Administrators have been left in the dark after the sudden suspension of their Facebook group. The move cuts off more than 27k members from accessing the page.
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Whale Spotting Tasmania, a group boasting more than 27,000 members, has suddenly been suspended from Facebook with administrators in the dark as to why.
On Wednesday, Facebook blacked out the group to members making it unsearchable and issued violation notices to Whale Spotting Tasmania’s two administrators.
Matt Green, who started the group 12-years-ago, said the notices he and the group’s other admin Andrew Bain received claimed there had been a deleted post that was breaching community standards.
“We have no idea what they were talking about,” Mr Green said.
“Facebook said there was a deleted post, but wouldn’t tell us what it was.”
He said they opted to review the ruling and within half an hour the social media giant responded upholding the suspension because the group breached community standards.
Facebook gave the reason the group didn’t follow community standards on employment fraud and scams.
“It’s pretty annoying, it’s certainly not the end of the world,” he said.
“It was a pretty simple Facebook group that had people posting on it daily … and now it’s completely vanished.”
Spammers often tried to join the group, he said but administrators worked to deny them.
“There was one post that made it to the group spam filter recently, that wasn’t posted, that we deleted,” he said.
Mr Green said he suspected a spammer might have got through to trigger the Facebook suspension.
Otherwise, he said they maintained a “hands off” approach to administration with members using the group appropriately to post about whales spotted in Tasmania.
“We make sure everyone is on topic, but the group is pretty good with it and we don’t have to do anything,” he said.
“It’s one of the cruiser administrator roles.”
In the past month, the popular group had 16 posts with more than 3000 reactions to posts that often included where to spot whales, including the times and locations, and photos.
If the Facebook group doesn’t to return, he says they would consider starting another one, however there are others that have popped up such as the Bicheno Whale Watching group.
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Originally published as Admins unclear why Whale Spotting Tasmania Facebook group disappeared without a trace
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