The private food bank “by mistake” from its Facebook page

• The North Food Bank’s Facebook page had been deactivated for two months.
• The social network had taken this measure without warning and without explanation.
• Facebook admitted a mistake on his part and admitted that the page was up to its standards.

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“Content unavailable”. This is the terse message that Internet users could read for almost two months when they tried to connect to the Facebook page of the
Northern Food Bank. The president of the local entity of the charity, Jacques Devaux, found himself helpless in the face of the silence of the social network.

The North Food Bank created its Facebook page for the first time in 2015. Since then, this digital showcase has enabled it to communicate on its past, present and future actions in the fight against malnutrition and food waste. Admittedly, its community of 900 followers seems very modest, but in this period of coronavirus, social networks remain the best way to talk about yourself.

Disabling “by mistake” recognizes Facebook

“In mid-March, we wanted to publish a report on Facebook on the dematerialized collection that we had just carried out. It is there that I realized the disappearance of our page, remembers Jacques Devaux. According to him, Facebook had unpublished his page without having taken the trouble to notify the association and without giving an explanation. “Other associations of our federation had the same problem and had to redo new pages from scratch”, we assure the federation of food banks.

The North Food Bank tried to contact the social network through the help and assistance procedure. In vain. “We were never answered despite the many messages we left,” laments the president. He suspects obscure algorithms of having done the same thing as for the town of Bitche, in Moselle. The town page was unpublished because Facebook bots confused the town’s name with the insult in English (bitch, translated as bitch).

This Wednesday, 20 Minutes contacted Facebook France to try to get an explanation. The social network admitted that the page had been “deactivated by mistake” and that a “new examination” had concluded that this page was in conformity with “the standards of the community”. The page of the Food Bank of the North was thus restored overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.

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