'It's frustrating': Municipal links removed from B.C. community Facebook pages

The mayor of Princeton is voicing his frustration and concern after multiple municipal links were apparently removed from several community Facebook groups Friday and Saturday.

“Everything that had a link back to the municipality’s website is now gone, dating back to four years,” said Princeton mayor Spencer Coyne, who added this happened on at least six community groups. “Everything my staff has put up has disappeared. Meetings, public hearings, bylaws, notices about water shut offs or road closures, anything we would post back to our main website has been removed.”

Coyne said the reason the posts were removed, according to Facebook, was because they went “against our Community Standards on cybersecurity.”

“It’s a struggle especially during the fire season here,” said Coyne. “It just makes it really, really frustrating because how do you post a PDF that says where the evacuations are, this is the map, this is the information you need to know, when those pieces of information keep disappearing from the social media channels that we use?”

Princeton isn’t alone. This weekend a link to an official government post was also removed from a Columbia Shuswap community group, with Facebook giving the same reason.

“There was nothing wrong with the post - it was a district municipal post,” said page admin Maria Otting. “Is that now a new thing? We can’t share from our City of Salmon Arm and District of Sicamous and Town of Golden? I’m super concerned about this. In fact, I’m not sure how else we would get information out if we’re not able to share it on our community Facebook groups.”

Meta told CTV News Monday “our teams are currently looking into this,” but confirmed the removals are not connected to the Online News Act and the banning of Canadian news content from its social media platforms.

In August, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, started blocking access to news for Canadian users after Ottawa passed Bill C-18 requiring tech companies to negotiate deals with media outlets for content.

“It's frustrating, this is really frustrating, especially with the news ban,” said Coyne. “Now if our information is going to be taken down as well, how do we get our information out to the public?”

“We've got to get to the bottom of this and get it fixed,” said Otting, “because we have been relying on Facebook groups for years and to be cut off from this, it can just be catastrophic for people.”

Coyne has requested the removals be reversed, contesting Facebook’s decision to take them down. So far he says he’s heard back on at least four posts, with Facebook replying on those posts with a gavel icon next to a message reading “we’re keeping it down.”