LAST THURSDAY EVENING at 20:08, Meta, the owner of Facebook, suspended the La Zenia Community Facebook Group.
Established in 2018, the super-popular group has rapidly grown to become the largest community group in the South Costa Blanca, welcoming almost 150 new members daily with a total membership exceeding 135,000 people.
The Facebook group comprises residents of Orihuela Costa and visitors from more than 42 countries globally, including almost every local social business in the locality including bars, restaurants, gyms, and clubs.
It has become the digital town square for Orihuela Costa, a place where people can communicate with each other, share information and knowledge, and ask questions about everything from banking to bedding, or virtually any other aspect of visiting, travelling to, or living in Spain.
As administrators, we were given no warning that the group would be suspended, and having spent the past seven years building the online community and welcoming tens of thousands of people each year, we are of course, devastated.
Why was the Facebook Group suspended?
The group was suspended by a Meta AI Bot for violating intellectual property rights. This is clearly a technical error, and we do not permit any publication that violates the intellectual property rights of others.
In fact, we uphold the group rules and Facebook's Community Standards rigorously, sometimes to the dismay of selected members.
But it's also one of the reasons the group is so popular, and we have always aimed to cultivate a safe space for civil discussion, the exchange of ideas and information, and to facilitate the connection of people and local businesses.
Enforcing rules or taking action against members who breach them isn't the most pleasurable part of our job. However, sometimes it's regrettably necessary, and we knew from the start that maintaining a healthy online environment wasn't always going to be easy in such a vast and diverse audience.
In this particular instance, we had already implemented technical measures to ensure that publications that breach intellectual property rights could not appear in the group, and the post that led to the suspension of the group was automatically declined and was not published.
What happens to the La Zenia Community Group now?
The honest answer is we don't know for sure. At the moment, the Facebook group is not visible to members and doesn't appear in search results on the platform. We can still see it, so we know the group is still there – albeit in its suspended, cryogenically frozen state.
We don't know how long the suspension will last – it could be a week, a month, or much longer. On the other hand, the group might reappear tomorrow.
We have contacted Meta about the suspension but we have not had a response from them. We will continue to attempt to reach out to the Support Team at Meta to resolve the issue.
As things stand right now, the future of the La Zenia Community Facebook Group remains in the fickle hands of the AI Meta Bots.
But nothing lasts forever, and once we have some positive news we'll let everyone know through our Facebook and Instagram channels. Watch this space.
UPDATE: Tuesday 18th February 17:11 – To Meta's credit, they responded via email, corrected the error, and removed the suspended status earlier today. The group can be accessed again by members here.
Looking for holiday ideas and travel inspiration? Find out more about our favourite recommended things to do on the Orihuela Costa.
