Church and State blog: Facebook: The social network's 59th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015. Two Parliamentary letters to Facebook revealed in this post (WITH UPDATE 22/4/2020: re double administrative block)

Thursday, May 02, 2019

Facebook: The social network's 59th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015. Two Parliamentary letters to Facebook revealed in this post (WITH UPDATE 22/4/2020: re double administrative block)

Our Church and State website has no less than 57 Nobel Laureates on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

Ted Cruz asks if Facebook is a "neutral public forum". Mark Zuckerberg admits Silicon Valley is an "extremely left-leaning place" and claims he tries to make sure the company does not have a political bias. pic.twitter.com/gaWw7ORQDY
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) April 10, 2018

Facebook does not have a political bias? Despite opposition from the social network, our Church and State website topped more than 3 million hits in 11 months from January to November 2017. Subsequently, Facebook's blocks against the site have gone from 47 days in 2017 to 179 days in 2018 plus 38 days this year plus an indefinite number of days as from tonight. Nonetheless, we get hundreds of thousands of hits - over 2 million hits in 2018 despite the equivalent of six months of these blocks; and 2 million hits this year despite over a month of blocks. Tonight it's their 59th block against Church and State since 1 December 2015. Now indefinitely my page listing all the groups I belong to has been blocked. I only get the groups I might be interested in (as opposed to those I belong to):

Everybody else gets the list of all the groups they belong to:

I encountered this administrative block before, on 16 April 2019, but it was removed within two days. Facebook blocks without an explanation come out of the blue. In March 2018 they blocked me from posting Church and State articles in groups four times for a total of 29 out of 31 days, and all without explanation. There's no way of knowing whether or not the rest of this month will be another wipeout from them, and without an explanation being given.

Facebook blocks (in days)

179 days in 2018
- January 2018: 16 days
- February 2018: 15 days
- March 2018: 29 days
- April 2018: 17 days
- May 2018: No blocks in May
- June 2018: 14 days
- July 2018: 17 days
- August 2018: 11 days
- September 2018: 12 days
- October 2018: 16 days
- November 2018: 19 days
- December 2018: 13 days
38 days in 2019
- January 2019: 16 days
- February 2019: 13 days
- March 2019: 4 days
- April 2019: 4 days*
- May 2019: 1 day (and counting)

* Not counting two-day administrative block

Four Facebook blocks ago, on 12 February, I posted Fighting for survival in London: Facebook's concerted campaign against our Church and State website shows no signs of waning (WITH UPDATE 19/2/2019: re Block 55 DAY 8). The post reveals more detailed information about these Facebook blocks. Last month every category page in our Church and State website was reduced to zero Facebook likes/shares. Our 5 Most Popular articles have 3.8 million Facebook likes/shares between them, not zero.

UPDATE 22 April 2020 (10.04am): Our 5 Most Popular articles now have 6.4 million hits between them! Last year Church and State had 5.7 million hits. And this despite the fact that there was such a low reach on our Facebook page from the beginning of October 2019 that the page became a virtual right-off for the rest of the year. Currently, we are up to Facebook's 71st block (day 2) against Church and State since 1 December 2015, and issued as usual without an explanation. This block, which prevents me from scheduling posts, records as their 10th block this year and as one of three blocks. They are also stopping me from posting in groups (2 days), and they are still blocking the listing of all the groups I belong to (357 days). Facebook only lifted a block on scheduling posts from our page on 21 November 2019 after 77 days. The never-ending assault on our email too continues unabated; see my post of 16 March, Email interception: Now we're finding reply emails in our spam box! It raises the question to what extent our incoming email is also being sabotaged. Our close colleagues have known for years that emailing us is not reliable. This flagship post highlights the targeting of our emails to Nobel laureates, US National Medal of Science laureates and knighted professors in particular. It also reveals a 2010 parliamentary letter to former Prime Minister Theresa May (then Home Secretary) about the interception of our email which continues unabated to this day.

Our News Feed (and its drop-down menu) has been restored. This administrative block prevented me from scheduling posts from our page and lasted 77 days from 6 September to 21 November 2019.

"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 (1930-2020), (then) 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

Thursday, May 02, 2019

Facebook: The social network's 59th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015. Two Parliamentary letters to Facebook revealed in this post (WITH UPDATE 22/4/2020: re double administrative block)

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