After a long 2 weeks of dealing with a tyrannical platform that expects you to have their TOS memorized, we have learned a lot. Facebook is the largest global social media page out there, and they flex their muscle to keep it under tight wraps. We all have been banned before for crap that we scratch our heads! A photo of Trump beheaded is fine, but a Turban joke gets you banned? It’s a strange system, but it’s not ours to operate- and nobody cares about user input.

Anyway, Facebook has begun a crackdown on so-called Fake News pages. This is great for pages that make shit up, but for legit pages it’s a nightmare. We believe people are targeting the page by flagging it as spam, or “fake news.” Facebook has the guilty until proven innocent motto, so your page just gets unpublished for 36-48 hours after you appeal. A human reads your page and determines if you’re legit or not. We are pretty legit, so we keep winning our appeals. There are also censorship issues that Facebook expects us to self-moderate the comments. We don’t and usually won’t unless it’s a threat or pure hate speech.

All this is why we have our website. We run everything down to the hardware in my basement! On the website (www.ocsn.news) we have zero restrictions beyond regular media guidelines. We don’t need to moderate nor restrict our content, public comments, and discussion forums. So, until the fake news craze dies down, ensure you have the page bookmarked here, and on the Backup page on FB! Thanks, and here’s to the future!