[Chapter-delegates] Suspension of Chapter Facebook pages for "impersonation"

[Joly MacFie]

For ISOC.LIVE video crossposting purposes, I have, over the years, gained
some admin role or other on 50+ Chapter Facebook pages. Recently a worrying
trend has arisen of pages getting suspended by FB for "impersonation".
Requested reviews have been summarily denied.

Apart from making these pages unavailable, this has resulted in me and
other page admins having our accounts restricted, such that we can't post
or manage groups. ( I manage several non-ISOC technical groups, a couple
with 1000s of members)

Suspensions include

*Internet Society Zimbabwe – ISOC Zim*
https://www.facebook.com/isoczim/
Suspended: December 17, 2024
Review Decision: Not restored (January 3, 2025)
Reason: Impersonation

*ISOC Mali – Le Chapitre malien d’Internet Society*
https://www.facebook.com/isocml/
Suspended: March 26, 2025
Review Decision: Not restored (March 31, 2025)
Reason: Impersonation

After these two, and since there had just been trumpeted the extension
ISOC and Meta's partnership in Africa
<https://www.internetsociety.org/news/press-releases/2025/internet-society-extends-multi-year-partnership-with-meta-and-announces-connectivity-co-funding-initiative/>,
I reached out to Victor Ndonnang and also Chapter Support to see if strings
could be pulled.

Victor, as always, was responsive, and concerned about the damage these
suspensions could do to two of the region's most active chapters.

However Vcitor's efforts appeared to be in vain. I remembered that Katie
Watson Jordan <https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-watson/>, formerly a
mainstay of the North America Bureau, now worked out at Meta. I reached out
to her and she asked for details to pass along to the "review team'".That
was around a week ago.

Chapter Support did not respond at all. No surprise there.

Today, April 23 2025, comes another suspension, not of  just a chapter, but
the Asia Pacific Bureau Page, taking out a whole region! I immediately
appealed this, with the result that, within minutes, the page was totally
removed.

[image: image.png]

I have passed that to Katie, too.

So, what's going on here? It's not like these pages were full of spam or
anything...

One possible explanation is that this is an undesirable side effect of some
other totally legitimate takedown. There are a number of orphaned, and
conceivably even bogus ISOC pages out there, and which were reported as
such, and the baby is now being thrown out with the bathwater.

Or, it just could be increased brand vigilance byISOC staff, with the same
result.

It can't be 100% ignored that staff have systematically carried out a
program to disengage from ISOC.LIVE, and me personally since removing my
funding a year back, and this could be part of that.

But, most likely, it's probably just Meta's stupid AI.

Nevertheless, it is a fact of life.

*===========WHAT TO DO?=========*

There are a couple of things Chapter leaders can do.

1) Review the admin roles on the Chapter's FB page, and remove anybody who
is not necessary. That includes me(  I am restricted from streaming anyway
at present.) People can always be re-added as 'task manager'.

2) Read these detailed instructions from ChatGPT
<https://chatgpt.com/share/6808c434-0970-8013-a95d-2ce70fae59d7> on how to
safeguard your page.

These instructions include NOT using the plain ISOC Symbol as an avatar,
but in turn how to make an alternative that conforms to ISOC's brand
guidelines is not obvious.

What ChatGPT does suggest is that ISOC itself recognizes chapter pages by
linking to them from the main ISOC page.

Joly
-- 
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Joly MacFie  +12185659365
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