The moderators of the public Common Sense with Dan Carlin group have informed me that Facebook decided to close the group down rather than bother with trying to punish the individuals who violated Facebook rules inside the forum. This is not the first time I’ve experienced Facebook’s high handed attitude towards organizations that are native to the platform.
Every time that Facebook harasses a public group out of existence, that group reconstitutes as a private group somewhere else, either on Facebook or on another platform. I’ve seen this happen dozens of times now.
Forcing public groups to go private or leave Facebook is self defeating behavior on their part. The objectionable behavior in question always continues in these reconstituted groups. It just happens in private, and the members who witness the behavior will not want to report it because of the consequences that Facebook will inflict on their group.
They need to stop this punishing of public groups if they want to be able to rely on user feedback going into the future. Their actions against public groups only further balkanizes group thought, forcing the individuals into more close-knit groups that are even more fearful of outsiders and differences of opinion than they were before.
Facebook should at least try to be smarter than their users are. They might be more successful at curbing the frightening polarization already present in the world.
Facebook feedback
