Facebook has shut down thousands of Facebook pages and removed all of the pages’ posts from 2021 due to Australian government legislation. This has happened to Non-Australian Facebook pages or websites with no affiliation to Australia.
Our company’s Facebook Page has been restricted, and all of our posts have been removed from 2021. This all started when we posted the following post on Facebook:
Facebook’s Recovery Options for Hacked Users Are Worst in Class: 2021 Report
After a few hours, we received the following notice from Facebook:
This post can’t be shared
In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted.
Our Facebook page has the URL: https://www.facebook.com/hack3dcom
When clicking on “Learn More,” this is what we see:
In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is also restricted.
This means you can no longer find posts or news articles on Facebook published by Australian news sources. In addition, Facebook users in Australia will not be able to view, share or find news articles published by Australian or International news publishers.
My post has been blocked. What can I do?
If you need more help, please contact our support team.
However, the link we have shared is our own report from Hacked.com containing no reference to Australia. We are a Norwegian Cybersecurity company with no reference to Australia.
Clicking on contact, our support team takes us to the following form:
When we sent this to Facebook, we got the following response:
Hi Pankaj,
Thank you for reaching out. In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted. We are working on restoring any pages that have been restricted in error.�For further assistance, please utilize this form: https://www.facebook.com/help/2579891418969617
Thanks,
Jessica
The response we received was a link back to the same form that we submitted to get the response from Jessica.
To recap:
- We got blocked from posting anything from Hacked.com on Facebook after posting a link to our own report with the name: Facebook’s Recovery Options for Hacked Users Are Worst in Class: 2021 Report
- Facebook removed all our Facebook posts with user comments from 2021.
- The support form Facebook has opened for issues with the blockage gives a new response from Facebook of utilizing the same form creating an endless loop.
- We are not registered in Australia, and we do not cover Australian news. We have no reference to Australia. Our company is registered in Norway.
- Thousands of other pages and websites not affiliated with Australia are experiencing the same issue (do a quick search).
We sincerely hope that Facebook did not block us because we posted a critical report regarding their recovery options for hacked users.
What can you do if you have a Facebook page that has been restricted due to Australian Legislation?
Well, it seems like you can’t do anything about it. Reports today have stated that Facebook will restore Australian Facebook pages after talks with the government, but when that will happen is not determined.
Featured image by TY Lim from Shutterstock.com