My Facebook Page Just Got Nuked
All those memes lost in time, like tears in rain...
The other day I woke up to some pretty horrible news - my Facebook page CSMFHT had been completely wiped off the face of the earth. What great act of hubris did I commit to invoke this punishment? Why, using a grainy image of a couple of moments from the first teaser trailer of the Odyssey movie. This was enough to draw the entire weight of NBC Universal’s legal machinery upon my account, with one copyright complaint seemingly enough to send the entire operation to the shadow realm.
To add insult to injury, it put my personal account into Facebook jail, so I can’t even like or comment on anything, or even send messages to people. The ability to appeal or protest all of this is unsurprisingly limited, especially now that it acts as though the page never existed in the first place. Furthermore, they only really let you argue the merits of the copyright claim rather than the punishment. I’ve submitted multiple appeals now saying that I’m happy to remove the post (not that it exists now) and confirming that I would have done the same had any such request been made first. And yet, since then, crickets…
It’s disheartening to think that eight years’ worth of work building up a following, generating content and creating a safe space for Classics on the site could all be wiped off the face of the earth in a single moment by a big movie company flexing its muscles. I’m under no illusions that sites like Facebook and Twitter essentially own everything you put into them and can take it away as they please, but it does show how inhuman and heartless many of these companies have become. Only a week ago, large and influential groups on Facebook were vanishing as well over completely minor issues.
It hurts a little more because Facebook was where all of this actually began. Just over eight years ago I was bored in class teaching a bunch of teenagers and decided we could make a page to share all the memes I liked. Looking back on it, the memes were all pretty terrible, but the page and its quality have grown with time. I’d like to think that I’ve made a positive difference in the world through this, and it has certainly taken me places I never expected I would go. It’s also an interesting time to reflect on how much popular social media culture has now moved away from the Facebook image type of meme towards the TikTok video one - and I have to either adapt or die. That’s why you’ll see more video content from me - the huge irony of this being that it was a video that led to my page’s downfall…
I don’t have much more to say than watch this space. I’ll try to give any updates I can as they come to me. I’m hopeful that this might only be a temporary measure and it could just zip back into existence as quickly as it left. Until then however, I will be trying to get the word out on alternative places that I can be found. Substack is a really good one, as I’m much more in control of this platform. Otherwise, I’m still active on Twitter and Instagram, and trying to build more content for YouTube and TikTok - please give me a follow on these if you could:
See you next time - I hope!
Moreover, how stupid is that on the part of NBC? Like, how many people even give a fig about the Odyssey? You were doing their marketing for them. You were promoting their movie to a group that actually would care about it. Dumb dumb dumb. If only the classics weren't so right about the stupidity of man.
Devastating! You're such an inspiration, I really hope this gets resolved for you.