Facebook Page

I’m not the only person to suffer at the hands of Facebook’s discriminatory and anti small business practices, indeed the actions against me reflect for many the ongoing attacks against those who have a voice, those who relish fine art and those who publish events.

Page Name

For two years I’ve been every now and again trying to change my Facebook Page name from Cardiff Life Model Collective to Life Drawing Wales or Life Drawing Cardiff. Facebook said ‘No’. For two years… Then I set up a new page and was allowed the name Life Drawing Wales, the business name I trade under when delivering life drawing in Wales. So, go to Cardiff Life Model Collective for the old stuff not to be updated after 15th March 2023. For the new stuff, with two posts per day, go to Life Drawing Wales.

Why I needed to create a new Facebook Page to get the name Life Drawing Wales is a mystery and will forever remain so. You see, the tech guys at Facebook hide behind very many doors, all locked. But, creating the new page might assist with reach as the new page will have no strike record. We’ll wait and see…

Freedom of Expression

I posted this, appealed to the oversight board and then got the warning of permanent page take down…

I don’t post images that go against Facebook’s policy of no nipples or other body parts that they see as offensive. Yet I fall foul of the Facebook bots on a regular basis. I receive strikes and bans and today am threatened with the permanent taking down of the Cardiff Life Model Collective page. These strikes are almost always overturned, as I contest and a review finds me not at fault, but, it would appear that the strikes remain permanently on my pages record and are cumulative in the eyes of Facebook’s ongoing attack on my business.

They do this to scare us, to train us into behaviour that they see as reasonable, within their rules. No business wishes to lose its Facebook presence and so creators and writers and political commentators and lockdown sceptics and those in opposition to the Wests response to the war in Ukraine, all of these and many more are targeted by Facebook and are diminished, either by the strikes or by self censoring the content that they create.

There is no longer, anywhere, apart from the alternative media platforms, such as Gettr and Rumble and Substack, where a creator can speak from the heart and publish their reality.

A complete record of the most recent strikes and Facebook’s woeful record of getting it right - look at how many times they got it wrong and yet I am penalised and have limited reach…

Nipples

I’ve received strikes for nipples. But I do not publish nipples and as I’ve received such strikes I’ve searched Facebook for nipples and I have found plenty. Usually, teenage girls, sexually displaying their breasts or ‘accidentally’ revealing a nipple. See my post on the allowed sexualised posts on Facebook. As an exercise, to see what Facebook would respond with, I’ve reported a few of these, and yet they remain. Of more concern, I’ve received notes from Facebook saying that the posts do not go against community standards. And yet I get a strike for nipples that I do not post, for sexual activity this is not there…

Shadowbanning

Because of these strikes Cardiff Life Model Collective is shadowbanned. Facebook told me no, it wasn’t but then I found a not on the account saying that it most definitely was. No one apart from the most ardent followers see my events, posts or indeed the page itself. And there is nothing I can do about this. Hence a new page, a fresh start and hopefully some renewed traction and reach.

Organic Sharing Of Events

Sharing of events for all event creators fell off a cliff at the time that we most needed the reach. February 2022 or thereabouts. Just as lockdowns ended Facebook changed its algorithms which resulted in almost nobody seeing the events that a page listed. I don’t see this as a coincidence. I see this as a deliberate act designed to finish off the majority of small businesses reliant on Facebook for their ‘free’ advertising. There is no workaround. All that is left is to pay Facebook for sharing of events that in the past was organic and fingers crossed.

Well, I won’t be giving Zuckerberg any of my cash. I don’t think I would sleep well at night if I did.