Facebook Shuts Down Conspiracy Watch Fan Page with over 3.4 Million Likes

SAN ANTONIO - July 1, 2014 - PRLog -- On June 10, 2014, Facebook unpublished Conspiracy Watch, one of the most popular pages of its kind, with over 3.4 million likes, it boasted more daily visitors than President Obama’s page!

But Conspiracy Watch isn’t the only Facebook page to suffer this censorship fate, as the social media monarch also recently unpublished or banned The Uprising of Women in the Arab World, Justice4Germans (J4G), RadicalPress, Anarchist Memes and many more.

Though not covered by mainstream news, those who frequent the Internet, especially Facebook and YouTube have surly heard about social media sites shutting down various controversial, “dissident” accounts.

With Conspiracy Watch, as with these other pages, Facebook justified its actions, claiming we “violated its rules or community standards.”

Posting about political corruption, corporate greed and social injustice, Conspiracy Watch has always tried to stay within the Facebook “rules and community standards,” considering the page was the lifeblood of their cause.

With Conspiracy Watch, after posting daily for over a year, providing viral content for its fans, Facebook did not feel the need to give warning, notice or even explanation as to the unpublishing. And while Facebook provided a link to an appeal form, it has yet to respond to either of the 2 Conspiracy Watch appeals.

Now Conspiracy Watch is again considering legal action. It had already considered filing suit against Facebook when the social media provider allowed hackers to takeover the page, doing nothing about it, even knowing that one of the hackers was impersonating the founder and owner of Conspiracy Watch, even signing his signing his name under his posts. It wasn’t until Conspiracy Watch paid a 3^rd party a considerable sum of money that the page was returned to its rightful owner.

Conspiracy Watch again considered filing suit against Facebook, when they felt they were being unrightfully censored by the social media giant on more than one occasion. They went as far as publishing the articles, "Unfair Facebook Censorship targets Conspiracy Watch and Similar Pages" and "Unfair Facebook Censorship targeting Conspiracy Watch Continues" on the http://conspiracy-watch.org website, but decided against filing suit against their host.

After all, Conspiracy Watch believed in the power of Facebook as an alternative media outlet, allowing individuals and organizations to get their message out to a bigger audience than was formerly the case, when people and groups without big budgets could do little more than pass out fliers. Conspiracy Watch even published the article, "The Iceland Revolution would have gone Unnoticed in US had it not been for Facebook and Social Media," praising the media outlet as the only source of information about a notable and historical occurrence.

In the meantime, daily Conspiracy Watch fans send countless messages to their affiliated pages and administrators personal profiles, asking “what happened to Conspiracy Watch?”, “when is Conspiracy Watch going to be back online?” and many similar questions.

Facebook and YouTube allow users to report abuse of their community guidelines. Facebook has hundreds of reviewers worldwide who follow up on these reports around the clock, according to the social network's website. However, in the case of Conspiracy Watch, even if every one of Facebook’s hundreds of reviewers complained against its posts, the 3.4 million fans should surly trump the complaining haters!

While Facebook blocks pages trying to share the truth of government, corporate and social corruption, they continue to allow the NekNominate drinking game, to which 4 deaths have been linked. And while a Northern Ireland-based NekNominate webpage was shut down after complaints from the family of Jonny Byrne from Co Carlow in Ireland, who died after jumping into the river Barrow in Carlow after allegedly taking part, Facebook said it was reviewing videos linked to the craze but said that the posting of such material is not a breach of its rules or community standards.

Not only has Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites been giving activist pages the axe, there have been cases of search engine manipulation, where both Google and YouTube suppressed controversial sites from their search results.

Even though social media has given activists a powerful tool to spread their cause, they have often felt their hands tied and their efforts thwarted by not only their service providers. There is even evidence that there are paid government trolls on social media, blogs, forums and websites to disrupt, discredit and destroy the activists (who they call “Conspiracy Theorists”) who own and operate them.

The Conspiracy Watch administrators will continue their fight against censorship, corruption and conspiracies with articles and activities on their website, at http://conspiracy-watch.org/