At 4:08 am on January 15, 2024, a person claiming to be a representative of Facebook sent RenewAmerica the following message regarding our Facebook page, which we operate for the benefit of those who frequent social media.
The threatening message said:
Important Notification:
Your Facebook page will be permanently deleted due to a post that infringes our trademark rights. We have made this decision after careful consideration and in compliance with our intellectual property protection policies.
If you believe this is a misunderstanding, please submit a complaint requesting the restoration of this page before it is removed from Facebook.
Request for Review: https://besafe-myaccount-2466824352.vercel.app
We understand that this may impact your current business objectives. If we do not receive a complaint from you, this will be our final decision.
Thank You,
This is a message from a temporary support agent with support id 231778895, please visit the link above and follow the instructions.
Out of due caution – since we have no way to know who actually sent the "Facebook" message (and since several years ago, Facebook clearly attempted to damage RenewAmerica's Facebook reach by deceptively interfering with that reach) – we sent the following message in response:
These are serious charges that appear to have no basis. Please provide us specific examples of how RenewAmerica has “infringed” your “trademark rights,” so we might know exactly what Facebook is claiming.
Your message makes at least two apparent errors: first, RenewAmerica is not a “business,” but a non-profit educational corporation; and second, RenewAmerica has certain “Fair Use” rights that we describe on our About page at RenewAmerica.com.
Please provide more specifics so that we may know precisely what we are being accused of. In the absence of any specifics, we assume that RenewAmerica is being targeted by Facebook for exercising its constitutionally protected free-speech rights, as we are aware that Facebook has done previously to other legitimate conservative websites, as well as our own.
A final thought...:
You know, it's entirely possible the professed Facebook rep was a genuine representative of Facebook as claimed and we therefore did the right thing by responding "in a lawyerly fashion" to a seemingly genuine threat from the organization. But this much we do know beyond speculation: The creators of Facebook are not to be trusted. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, a series of credible reports came out from reputable sources that revealed that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg had improperly sought to "buy" the election through a donation of nearly half-a-billion dollars of his own money to assist local election offices. (See here: "Zuckerberg’s election spending was ‘carefully orchestrated’ to influence 2020 vote: ex-FEC member"; and here: "The 2020 election wasn’t stolen, it was bought by Mark Zuckerberg.") Does the far-reaching "world of Facebook" deserve to be taken seriously?