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

Wed Apr 23 04:30:06 PDT 2025

Joly, I have been working for two weeks with Meta staff to try and get these pages restored. I asked Victor and you to provide the data that the review team needs and we've provided that to them. Typically, there are very few recourses after an appeal has been denied as with the Mali and Zimbabwe pages (please give me the details for the new page suspension off-list and I'll get that to the Meta review team).

To be clear, we'll need to keep our expectations low; in my experience pages are rarely resorted after appeal. I'm hopeful, especially given our collaboration with Meta.

We're working hard on this and so far there is nothing new to report back as it's in their queue (I assume). Can you please give us the benefit of the doubt that we are trying here? Thank you

--
Joseph Lorenzo Hall PhD, Distinguished Technologist, Internet Society
hall at isoc.org | +1-703-483-9504
internetsociety.org | @internetsociety
pgp: 3CA28D7B9F6DDBD34B1016075F86698740A9A871
________________________________
From: Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates-bounces at elists.isoc.org> on behalf of Joly MacFie via Chapter-delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 7:01:09 AM
To: ISOC Chapter Delegates <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
Subject: [Chapter-delegates] Suspension of Chapter Facebook pages for "impersonation"

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.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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