From the March 2, 2024 Omaha World Herald Newspaper.
Facebook shuts down popular Nebraska Through the Lens page
Since 2013, Nebraska Through the Lens, a Facebook page created by Steve Evans of Holdrege, has attracted more than 465,000 people representing 99 countries and all 50 U.S. states.
Its daily offering of dozens of photos — from weather shots to landscapes to wildlife — have been a respite for elderly shut-ins and the elixir for a good number of homesick enlisted men and women serving their country in faraway places.
"It seems to me that this is why Facebook was invented," said Scott Shafer, a Seward resident, photo hobbyist and regular contributor to Nebraska Through the Lens.
On Tuesday, Facebook shut down the site without notice or reason, said Evans, who has spent the last couple of days scrambling for answers and a way to get it back online.
On Wednesday, Evans was finally notified through email that the site was taken down because "Facebook's technology had identified that we had violated their community standards on intellectual property," Evans said.
He had no idea what Facebook was referring to. For years, Evans and a small team of site administrators have gone through the process of approving every picture posted — and there have been thousands. He commits at least two hours a day to approving photos.
"I couldn't even get an answer as to what intellectual property, what community standard we were violating," Evans said.
He said there were times in the site's 11 years online that he would get notified every now and then that a photo was removed for violating community standards.
"We would try to look into it to see what it was so we could learn from it," he said. "It was locked, and we were told they couldn't share that information with us. So we never could even learn from those violations."
He talked to administrators from other sites this week who told him that there is no coming back from being shut down by Facebook.
By Wednesday night, after hours of online chats, hand-wringing and attempts to establish telephone contact with someone in charge of such decisions at Facebook, Evans was notified.
"I was told it was permanently deleted, and there was nothing they could do," he said. "I told them they never even gave us a chance to appeal it."
Facebook did not respond to an email sent to its media relations department Thursday.