UPDATED: Facebook CENSORS Catholic Online Links

Facebook has now unblocked updates after suspending them Thursday for the account of Catholic Online after what has amounted to an escalating cyber war without explanation. Is this tacit support of an anti-Catholic agenda? Facebook, an epicenter for online social networking, has no direct way for victims, such as Catholic Online, to respond immediately to such false attacks, thus rendering such targets helpless. Repeated attempts at contact have been futile.

strong>UPDATE - On Friday the censorship block by Facebook was removed from Catholic Online's fan page with no explanation and no communication. We are again able to post on our wall and provide updates on the site.

Thursday, Catholic Online posts had been censored, leading people to a window that stated Facebook users had reported this link as "abusive." The links referred to were such posts as "Saint of the Day," Bible Reading," and "Prayer Requests."

The block by Facebook followed previous attempts on Wednesday by a gay extremists to deface our page and co-opt our copyrighted logo. After ten hours attempting to reach a real person at Facebook to resolve the issue, Catholic Online personnel gave up last night, planning to continue the next day.

Late in the evening Associate Editor Randy Sly was able to successfully get communicate via email with a Facebook Associate, Elizabeth Linder, through the press office. In her response to Sly, Linder stated in her last email, "We typically do not comment on specific Groups or Pages and our reasons for taking them down..."

Catholic Online is not sure what Linder's actual job is at Facebook, since no title or additional contact information was provided. In doing some research, it looks like she recently came to the internet company after spending a year with YouTube and Google working in the Communications office.

Catholic Online Publisher, Michael Galloway, indicated, "We are not going to give up trying to reach a real person at Facebook and get to the bottom of this. We want an explanation for this bizarre activity. We tried every avenue at our disposal and did not receive any response to our inquiries through the channels provided. Their new F8 platform may be so intrusive with gathering extremely personal information that Catholic Online may issue a warning to all catholic organizations through out the world".

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Without prior warning, on Thursday Facebook cut off further Wall updates by Catholic Online and blocked all outgoing URL's due to alleged abuse reports.

Facebook, an epicenter for online social networking, has no direct way for victims, such as Catholic Online, to respond immediately to such false attacks, thus rendering such targets helpless. Repeated attempts at contact were found to be futile.

Associate Editor Randy Sly eventually made contact with a person from the press office, seeking clarification and an official statement from Facebook but so far nothing has been received.

Catholic Online first opened its Facebook account (www.facebook.com/catholiconline) in late March. Within a few weeks, the Catholic Online Facebook account attracted near 6,000 friends and subscribers. But opposition to the account has been strong from the beginning. Many anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bigots have attacked Catholic Online, claiming that the organization is anti-gay.

An article on Catholic Online linking pedophilia to homosexuality spurred the most hate mail, and opposition to the organization reached its zenith on April 19th, when a Facebook account entitled "Catholic Online Against Catholic Online" was established. This was an obvious attempt to attack Catholic Online, even going so far as to misappropriate our copyrighted logo. When representatives from Catholic Online filed a complaint against the impostor web site, the group in question was terminated.

In response, and in order to further disrupt Catholic Online's access, this same group has apparently filed numerous false reports with Facebook in order to cause the Catholic Online account to be suspended. This action was taken in spite of the fact that a trivial investigation of the allegations would have proven them patently false and an obvious attempt to misuse Facebook resources to silence Catholic Online. Catholic Online has not been able to post their own legitimate news stories for over 10 hours due to this censoring.

Nick Leyendecker, VP of Network Operations for Catholic Online submitted a formal letter of complaint to Facebook which read, "As much as we are trying to use your platform to interact with and expand our readership, your site continues to present us with difficulties. Whether its the ongoing verbal attacks from devotees of 'alternative lifestyles' or the current situation on our page; basically, without contacting  us in any manner, Facebook has apparently blocked access to every URL we  post on our Wall.

"I can guarantee that none of the links posted by Catholic Online are malicious in any way (as simply visiting them would doubtless have demonstrated). Please let us know what we need to do to resolve these issues so that we may fully and correctly interact with our followers, rapidly approaching some 6,000 in not much more than a month. It would seem to me that if your service is going to continue to enjoy the success it has there ought to be some basic standards of behavior; I would probably start with terminating the accounts of people who falsely and maliciously report links which are perfectly valid and quite harmless," the statement read.

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There has been no explanation for the sudden shutdown.

If you would like to let Facebook know your opinion about their support of these anti-Catholic forces, please (click here).

Please forward this article to anyone and everyone you know to support our efforts to STOP anti-catholic bigotry. 

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