Darwin Swimming Club issues desperate plea to Facebook to get 15-year-old page back

After hackers commandeered their page with more than 250 bizarre posts in 25 days, a Top End sports club is calling for Facebook to finally take them seriously.

Darwin Swimming Club is fighting to regain control of its 15 year old Facebook page.

The Northern Territory’s oldest and largest swimming club says it’s very distressed as its main vessel of communication has been hacked.

The Darwin Swimming Club (Buffaloes) had its Facebook page hacked by an unknown identity late October, and has been fighting to regain control for more than three weeks.

Not just the oldest and biggest club in the NT the Buffs are the most successful, and with success comes a big following.

Since the page’s creation in October 2009 the club has amassed 2400 followers, keeping its community up to date with important information.

Darwin Swimming Club logo. Picture: Darwin Swimming Club.

The hacked page has posted more than 250 times in 25 days, spamming followers with political memes, AI images and ‘offensive’ images such as a caricature of Scott Morrison as male genitalia accompanied by the word ‘Scromo’.

Despite club members’ best efforts their page has yet to be rescued with head coach Tim Few feeling severely let down by Facebook’s apathy.

“We have contacted Facebook relentlessly and have yet to hear a single thing back from them,” he said.

“Amazingly, they’ve actually told us that nothing is in breach of their guidelines.”

Running out of faith with the powers that be, Few said he reached out to as many tech savvy people he knows, even tossing up the idea of ‘re-hacking’ the page.

“I’ve tried everything, reached out to everyone I know and they’ve all been unable to do anything about it,” he said.

Viral quote by Dan Andrews was another image posted by hackers to the swimming club's page. Picture: Facebook.

One of the politically charged images that was posted on Darwin Swimming Club’s Facebook page by hackers. Picture: Facebook.

Apart from the spamming and lack of help from Facebook, Few said he and the club were very concerned with missing people who might be reaching out to the club.

“Fortunately we can still stay in contact with our current members via email and WhatsApp groups but now we can’t reach our ex-members, the rest of the sporting community or new/potential members,” Few said.

“Facebook is the main way we get new members as they commonly message us and inquire about signing up.

“I can only speculate how many people we’ve missed but they will probably jump ship now to another club which affects us and our growth.

“This will be a major talking point in our upcoming community meeting this weekend and if we can’t get it sorted out we will need to make a new page which will erase everything we’ve done and the community we’ve built.”

If you or anyone might be able to help Darwin SC regain control of its Facebook page, please head to the club’s website at: https://darwinswimclub.org.au/, and shoot them a message. Facebook’s parent company, Meta has been contacted for comment.