According to a report this week in The Daily Dot, Facebook is cracking down on the loose network of artists, writers and social media influencers informally known as “Weird Facebook.” These slightly kooky sites, which produce popular memes and boast tens of thousands of followers, form a strange alternative social network within Facebook — and one that perhaps proved so strange that Facebook felt the need to shut it down.
Several creators of these popular meme pages claim that Facebook recently began shutting down their pages without warning, and that many memes were simply replaced with a message saying “This Facebook post is no longer available.”
“Honestly there were no warnings or emails,” said John Trulli, the creator behind the popular Cabbage Cat page. “I didn’t notice [Cabbage Cat] was down until a fan notified me. I talk to tons of other page owners and they say you usually get warnings and strikes.”
When The Daily Dot reached out to Facebook to comment on the mysterious removals, all the site would say was that the content violated its community standards.
While there’s no doubt that some of these memes dealt with hot-button political issues, most of them did so for the sake of satire, which is allowed by Facebook. And, of course, there’s content on Facebook that is much more offensive than these “Weird Facebook” pages that is allowed to remain posted on the site. As is almost always the case with incidents of Facebook censorship, it’s clear the site needs to enforce its own rules more fairly.