The review apparently stemmed from that admin's comments on a story published over at PoliceOne. Some state, I can't remember which, just passed a law allowing retired police officers to carry a gun into a bar, while still banning anyone else from carrying their legally licensed and owned gun into a bar. Presumably, even the bar owner himself is still barred from carrying a firearm into their own bar, unless they were a police officer at some point. So our admin commented that he disagreed with the law, and any law which gives police special privileges, elevating them to a separate class above the citizenry of this nation. This latest exemption for police is yet another open assault against the Second Amendment rights of the citizens.Someone who was not even involved in that discussion hit our page with a bad review, after reading that comment. We are not typically very concerned about bad reviews. We aren't here to win a popularity contest. What is popular is usually ignorant crap that is not at all in the best interest of the people, or in accordance with the founding principles of this nation. But this particular person was not simply content to leave a bad review.
They went on to continue attacking the page, in true troll form, posting insulting memes, blaring out that we were all "cop-haters" so on and so forth, even to the point of threatening legal action against the page. Although we have only banned, literally, about 3 or 4 people in the lifetime of our page, our admin tried to ban this troll after incessant attack, but found that the function no longer worked, even when operating the page in administrator mode. So the admin went on to defend the page, in a tit-for-tat shootout of sorts, in the review section. The troll then reported a complaint to Facebook. This resulted in Facebook actually banning our own page administrator, who was simply defending our page against an extremely aggressive attack, stemming from a relatively minor debate.
Now, as the senior page administrator, I have a few observations to make in light of losing one of my best commentators for the time-being.
First, I don't believe a page should even be required to have a review section. We aren't a restaurant or a cab service here. Our admins wade into the thick of contentious issues and current events with their opinions in an effort to inform, and inspire fruitful debate. So really, it's no wonder that our review section has simply become a sounding-board for people to attack the page, after they have lost a debate or want to simply derail a legitimate discussion happening elsewhere. Essentially, our review section is a troll's best friend. An open forum for ad hominem attack to discredit the source, while ignoring the actual issue at hand. This is a classic tactic of disinformation.
Second, the overwhelming majority of bad reviews and outright attacks have come from police officers and friends of police officers. Despite the fact that one of our admins actually worked in law enforcement for many years, despite the fact that several of our admins have worked as first-responders in general, despite the fact that we often support the police and routinely share "good cop" stories, we are branded a "cop hater" page because of the few occasions where an admin has had the audacity to disagree with the status quo.
Keep in mind that we cover all sorts of news material, current events, politics, and social issues. We get into debates all over Facebook, here on our own page, and on pages from which stories we have shared originated. Many of these debates get pretty heated. People can be vicious when debating things like the minimum wage, poverty, marriage and family issues, left vs. right politics, and so on. Yet none of those discussions stir the wrath of a troll attack so much as questioning the police. Now keep in mind, that there are many law-enforcement officers out there who are "oath keepers" and "three-percenters" and Constitutionalists who take their oath seriously. Many of those officers themselves disagree with the direction our country has taken, toward a totalitarian police state, and instead strive to uphold the values of the Constitution. Yet any challenge whatsoever to police in general, and the status quo, are met with the most aggressive and underhanded attacks.This latest troll to attack our page wasn't even a police officer, but a bulldozer operator. Though often we have been openly attacked by police officers themselves too. Rather than discussing the issue at hand, the page itself is attacked. This hits on a whole bunch of tactics of disinformation.
Seeing now that proportion of bad reviews regarding police issues, the action taken by Facebook against our page, along with so many current headlines and stories, leaves me truly frightened as to our current state of affairs in this country. The police, more and more each day, demand blind obedience. Police "supporters" are fanatical in defending the police, even when the police themselves openly admit they have crossed the line. We are not talking here about obedience to our country, nor obedience to the Constitution, not obedience to the values of liberty and freedom, nor obedience to achievements of wisdom and truth, but obedience to the police themselves. This is an extremely dangerous precedent. Are we now expected to pledge allegiance to the police? Having one look at our review page, the answer appears to be "yes."
