Church and State blog: 13th Facebook block since 1 December 2015: Our Facebook page has been dismantled for the administrator in an unprecedented attack (WITH UPDATES)

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

13th Facebook block since 1 December 2015: Our Facebook page has been dismantled for the administrator in an unprecedented attack (WITH UPDATES)

We are calling this Facebook's 13th block since 1 December 2015. Since this morning, our Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) Facebook page has been dismantled for the administrator (myself), and any link I post to my personal Facebook wall, groups or pages is not recognized. They did not respond to any of my previous twelve appeals, so I don't expect a response from them now. The question is have I been effectively removed from Facebook without any cause, reason, notification or right of appeal.

27 September 2016

Dear Facebook,

Since this morning, without any cause, reason, notification or right of appeal, our Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) Facebook page has been dismantled for the administrator (see screenshot 1 N4CM page); and any link I post to my personal Facebook wall, groups or pages is not recognized (see screenshot 2 wall, 3 group, and 4 page).

I have also made a video of the dismantled N4CM page for the administrator (myself). It can be viewed at http://tinypic.com/m/jj8h0w/1

Please could you address these problems at your earliest convenience.

Yours faithfully,

Lola Heavey
Webmaster
Network for Church Monitoring

"Let me recommend an important web site - churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out." - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Screenshot 1 N4CM page

Screenshot 2 wall

Screenshot 3 group

Screenshot 4 page

These then are the 13 Facebook blocks we have experienced since 1 December 2015:

1st 1-4 December 2015
2nd 5-7 December 2015
3rd 6-9 January 2016
4th 12-15 January 2016
5th 20-22 January 2016
6th 13-16 February 2016
7th 23-26 March 2016
8th 20-23 May 2016
9th 25-30 May 2016
10th 1-3 July 2016
11th 7-8 September 2016
12th 21-22 September 2016
13th 27-28 September 2016

UPDATE 1 28 September (12.02am): Our N4CM page continues to be dismantled for the administrator (myself), although I can now share to the page via other pages or directly from our website; links I post to my personal Facebook wall, groups or pages are now being recognized. We are calling this an ongoing "administrator's block". Still no response from Facebook to my complaint above.

UPDATE 2 28 September (4.07am): The administrator's block has been lifted but our publishing tools have been dismantled (including the record of our scheduled posts for later today). We are calling this a "publishing tools block" which may take our 13th Facebook block into a third day tomorrow. Later this morning I am waking up to work on a full-blown paragraph on Facebook for Declan's next updated complaint to the United Nations. I will be posting the paragraph to all future Facebook blog posts.

To the best of our knowledge, not even Shadow Communities Minister Lyn Brown received a reply from Facebook UK Managing Director Steve Hatch last December.

Facebook UK Managing Director Steve Hatch

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

13th Facebook block since 1 December 2015: Our Facebook page has been dismantled for the administrator in an unprecedented attack (WITH UPDATES)

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