Hey Maine Wire Readers,

Messages began pouring in last night about some unusual activity around our Facebook page. We can confirm that Facebook was begun censoring Maine Wire stories going back to even December. This includes removing links that elected officials posted to their own pages, blocking traffic to the Maine Wire, and limiting our visibility. Facebook (aka Meta) has always embraced censorship, and even began targeting some of our content on the solar subsidies last week, but their efforts really went into overdrive last night. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it’s happening right after that splendid debate.

We always knew that Facebook was not a platform to trust. While we used it to reach Maine and New England audiences, we understood that if our following grew (which it has, from under 5k followers to more than 17k), that there would be a response. We don’t know if this was a targeted spam/reporting campaign by left-wing activists. Or perhaps something like when Sen. Angus King’s campaign emailed his friends at Facebook to have users banned indefinitely. Facebook could just be doing this all on their own as well. Right now, because of whatever the social media company is doing, we can’t even access the backend of our page to learn more about the situation.

What now?