Facebook deletes pro-gun groups

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Trent

Trent

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This is confirmed true, first hand, as two groups I'm involved with (as an Admin) were nuked in the last 24 hours. (***And have not been restored)

http://controversialtimes.com/issue...tes-hundreds-of-pro-gun-pages-without-notice/

What started as scattered reports of pro-gun Facebook groups being shut down quickly turned into a cacophony of complaints yesterday as the social media giant took a first step against supporters of the Second Amendment.

The targeted groups primarily consist of local or state wide buy / sell / trade groups. The sudden disappearance of so many pages across so much of the nation sent gun owners to other pages to see if it was a localized event.
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I've never found a compelling reason to open a Facebook account. This reinforces my feelings about this fad's usefulness or uselessness depending on your perspective.
 
Alexander; the buy/sell/trade/auction pages are the ones that got nuked.

Other groups I'm a member of are still there.
 
buy / sell / trade groups
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Some people were using FREE Facebook pages to conduct business. Of those, some of them are in highly regulated businesses like firearms. As long as FB is closing FB accounts for BST of any regulated items or materials and not just firearms I don't see an Anti motive at all.
 
hso said:
Some people were using FREE Facebook pages to conduct business. Of those, some of them are in highly regulated businesses like firearms. As long as FB is closing FB accounts for BST of any regulated items or materials and not just firearms I don't see an Anti motive at all.
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The groups I was admin of didn't operate as a business. More like a classifieds.

Every "sale" or trade, was strictly person to person. People were responsible their own sales, trades, or lack thereof.

It operated no differently than the classifieds on THIS board. There were rules that had to be adhered to, such as listing location and $ amount. But the moderators / admins didn't do any facilitation of the sales whatsoever.
 
Trent, the b/s/t group I belong to got nuked.

None of the numerous pro-gun groups I belong to have been hampered in any way.

Seems commerce related, and happens to involve guns and gun parts.

FWIW the Honda parts b/s/t group I belonged to is gone as well ?
 
Hey Trent, I'm a member of the Travis county, Wilco, and Killeen trader site. None of those got knocked.

Ive seen all of Facebook's disclosures. And notices posted. None of them say Facebook has an agenda to tear the sites down. They're all basically saying they wont stand for illegal activity. Things like kids under 18, and selling out of state. As long as you post the disclaimers that Facebook asked to have posted, you should be go to go... My three groups are still there.. Alive and well...

I don't think what Facebook is asking is unreasonable. As they are a business and may be held liable for activity from their site.
 
Panic and indignation on Gunnutz about it too. Very decided, 'Who cares?' responses. Facebook is a kid's site anyway.
"...hawking there..." Their stuff, perhaps?
 
kids site or not. there's a fair number of firearms available there. I myself have used it with success on both ends of the spectrum several times.
 
Facebook's policies are especially tough for firearms related businesses. Facebook will allow a Bob's Gun Shop to have a facebook page, but it will not allow Bob's Gun Shop to run campaigns through its paid promotional tools. Gun businesses are force to rely on person to person networking to obtain crucial facebook "likes" which is far less efficient than running a paid campaign through facebook.

Love it or hate it, social media is a vital marketing tool for all businesses these days.
 
Sunray said:
Panic and indignation on Gunnutz about it too. Very decided, 'Who cares?' responses. Facebook is a kid's site anyway.
"...hawking there..." Their stuff, perhaps?
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That's actually no longer true. Younger demographics have been migrating away from facebook for quite some time in favor of trendier social media platforms. Young folk started bailing on it the second their parents and grandparents started making accounts and friending them.
 
Jason_W said:
That's actually no longer true. Younger demographics have been migrating away from facebook for quite some time in favor of trendier social media platforms. Young folk started bailing on it the second their parents and grandparents started making accounts and friending them.
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I disagree. Unlike MySpace, you can set up filters to control who in your friends list sees what. The privacy settings used to be "private, friends, friends of friends, public." Now you can set up groups like "family, close friends, shooting buddies, leftists," etc, and you can control what groups see what. I've seen my niece post things that I know my sister doesn't see, and after saying something, I dont see it either...

FB does have a "neutral stance" that leans anti. I've seen raffles/giveaways that plainly stated "must ship to an FFL" that disappeared via FB staff, and the vendor called them out on it in a later update. I follow several holstermakers as well, and some of them have had the same issue.

What's trendier than FB at the moment? Google+ is the only social network I know of that tried to cut into FB's market, and their 15 minutes of fame only lasted about five...
 
Plan2Live said:
I've never found a compelling reason to open a Facebook account. This reinforces my feelings about this fad's usefulness or uselessness depending on your perspective.
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It's fascinating how those who remain purposely ignorant about FB seem so inclined to comment about FB. Anyone who suggests that FB (and social media in general) is a "fad" is displaying a hideous level of ignorance. Millions have termed the telegraph, telephone, television and Internet as "fads" at one time or another so their behavior is nothing new.

It's certainly not limited to firearms either. When I created the FB page for my church (with the pastor's permission of course), there were a number of very vocal individuals who attacked the parish's use of FB -- even though they clearly had no clue what FB is all about. That little FB page is responsible for attracting new souls to the parish and it has become a prime was to share information amongst parishioners.

I have created three FB pages for the shooting groups I have been involved with. There was some resistance from those without a clue about FB, but once again it has proven to be a superb way to disseminate match information and to bring more people into the shooting sports.

Even hickok45 was attacked when he began using (and using quite well) FB to disseminate information by those ignorant of FB. He has ignored them and their carping has quieted down. His FB postings are worthwhile and they are a good way to advertise his new videos on Youtube.
 
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hso said:
Some people were using FREE Facebook pages to conduct business. Of those, some of them are in highly regulated businesses like firearms. As long as FB is closing FB accounts for BST of any regulated items or materials and not just firearms I don't see an Anti motive at all.
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Agreed. I think a huge problem is that those who comment about FB have absolutely no idea what FB is. It's not that they have a working knowledge of FB and prefer not to use it. They have no clue and they are simply parroting others who have no clue.

Their comments smack strongly of 10 year old critiques of MySpace, especially the "wall" comments... :rolleyes: Rather fascinating to watch...
 
Jason_W said:
That's actually no longer true. Younger demographics have been migrating away from facebook for quite some time in favor of trendier social media platforms. Young folk started bailing on it the second their parents and grandparents started making accounts and friending them.
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Very true. I suspect the average age on FB gun groups is ~40 and ranges from 14-90.
 
Facebook....

And yet another reason not to use Facebook. :rolleyes:
I don't use it & never really felt the need.
When billionaire Mark Zuckerberg told Today's Matt Lauer that Facebook owns all the content & can do whatever they want with it, I said: nope. :D
 
Wisconsin Gun Barter is still up with a post less than 5 minutes old.

About a week or 10 days ago, they had a mild shake-up where they reminded everyone to follow all laws, etc., and implied that someone on the page had tried to do a face-to-face across state lines and that it wouldn't be facilitated on the site.

Perhaps, since some of the barter groups have been nuked and others have not, it's been some illegal activity of the site contributers that the site itself didn't detect or shut down that caused the site's closure.
 
Pretty sure the two groups I was involved with as an Admin got nuked because we allowed FFL's a certain amount of posts each week. (E.g. don't flood the group, but you can post a few interesting things).

That probably found us in violation of some obscure TOS.
 
Zach S said:
I disagree. Unlike MySpace, you can set up filters to control who in your friends list sees what. The privacy settings used to be "private, friends, friends of friends, public." Now you can set up groups like "family, close friends, shooting buddies, leftists," etc, and you can control what groups see what. I've seen my niece post things that I know my sister doesn't see, and after saying something, I dont see it either...

FB does have a "neutral stance" that leans anti. I've seen raffles/giveaways that plainly stated "must ship to an FFL" that disappeared via FB staff, and the vendor called them out on it in a later update. I follow several holstermakers as well, and some of them have had the same issue.

What's trendier than FB at the moment? Google+ is the only social network I know of that tried to cut into FB's market, and their 15 minutes of fame only lasted about five...
Click to expand...

Twitter.
 
alexander45 said:
Yup just looks like facebook is tired of folk hawking there stuff on there site
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There are plenty of B,S,T pages on FB. Only gun groups got targeted, but none of the pets, cars, or online garage sale B,S,T pages got hit. Just guns. Everyone I've seen has disclaimers about following state/ local/ federal laws for all FTF transactions.
 
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