Meme Pages Planning To Fight Back Against Facebook Censorship

Zipper on mouthIn July, the creators of several so-called “Weird Facebook” meme pages claimed that the site was shutting down their pages and blocking content without warning. Now, the admins and followers of these creative, slightly off-kilter pages are preparing to take the fight to Facebook itself.

The loose collection of Facebook pages that make up the “Weird Facebook” movement are known for producing strange, ironic, satirical and often very popular memes. Though the content these pages post is often bizarre, they don’t typically cross the boundary of bad taste; that’s why it was so unexpected when Facebook allegedly began taking the content down.

The creators of these pages claim that Facebook has a positive bias toward verified pages such as those belonging to celebrities, allowing “objectionable content” to remain there that would otherwise be removed. So, to protest Facebook’s apparent unfair treatment, many of these meme creators are uniting under a common symbol: a pink, upside-down Facebook “F” logo. Participating meme pages also posted a prewritten statement with the logo, calling on users to file complaints against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission.
“This page and many others are simultaneously posting this message in order to rally fans to file FTC (Federal Trade Commission) complaints against Facebook for ‘fraudulent’ content review policies and a misleading community guidelines,” the statement read.

Some of the people behind the movement know it’s a long shot, but they feel like they must make a stand against the social media giant anyway.

“Ultimately I don’t think the FTC would take action […] but this shows a lot of unity among the meme community that has had their content stolen, reported, deleted, etc.,” one meme activist told The Daily Dot. “FB has engaged in a meme page genocide, and we’re finally going to fight back. It’s mostly symbolic, but brings attention to a problem encountered by admins of every page.”