Here’s why all your favourite meme and shitposting groups on Facebook went into hiding for a while

If you’re anything like us and joined way too many *shitposting groups on Facebook, you’ve probably been notified about the same thing — they’ve changed their privacy settings from “Public” or “Closed” to “Secret” over the last 24 hours. 

(*the posting of intentional and sometimes aggressively low-quality memes, i.e. posting shittily)

No explanation was given. It was as if there was a purge of some sort on Facebook that involved all your favourite meme groups. Even relatively shitpost-free groups like the Cool Cat Group (where members simply put up pictures of their chill felines) had to go dark in response to… something. 

That something appeared to be sabotage — sabotage supposedly carried out by a rather overzealous individual in Indonesia. Operating under multiple Facebook pages each called the Indonesian Reporting Commission (IReC), the saboteur launched an operation sometime this week, aiming to take down meme groups and pages. The first victim that allegedly got shut down by IReC was Crossovers Nobody Asked For (CNAF), a public Facebook group that had over 448,000 members right before it got disabled by the platform on Monday. 

According to Know Your Meme, the former members of CNAF started speculating that IReC was behind the takedowns. The individual behind IReC — now allegedly identified as an Indonesian man — proudly boasted how he managed to get the “toxic” and “cancerous” groups on Facebook removed after flagging their posts as offensive content. 

A Redditor in the know managed to dig up some information on IReC’s modus operandi — apparently, he would spam pornographic images (including child porn) in the group and report the group for offensive content on Facebook. 

“I believe if high profile stuff like this gets reported, it goes right past the group admin's regular reports and goes straight to Facebook,” wrote u/ayefrezzy on Reddit. 

“Then of course, Facebook shoots first and asks questions later and in turn, groups are shut down.” 

Group admins simply knew that they had to go dark to prevent IReC or any other copycat trolls from causing Facebook to bring down a permanent ban hammer. Going “Secret” meant that the vigilante culprit couldn’t find the groups through a public search. 

Over here, one of the biggest meme groups — Singapore Shitposting Constituency — had to play it safe as well. When queried, Kiasu Memes For Singaporean Teens founder mentioned to AsiaOne that he had no idea about the situation, but made sure that all posts made in his shitposting group would have to be moderated. 

Beaten up? 

In response to IReC’s alleged actions, the backlash was swift. Rumours spread that the Indonesian community had “handled” the matter — the man behind IReC was said to have been beaten up in real life. Know Your Meme mentioned that his identity was outed as well, leading to his personal information (including his address) getting leaked online. 

Indonesian meme page Teman-Teman Bulu Burung managed to obtain an apology letter from the IReC saboteur who was named as “Muhammad Salim”. The letter allegedly written by him explained the reasons behind his actions: A quest to destroy everything negative on Facebook, including religious offensive jokes, hoaxes and hate-speech.

“I’m deeply sorry for what happened to everyone, and to our wrongdoings,” the letter noted. “I, as leader of IReC, will stop IReC's operation, and we will take responsibility for everything (that) happened.” 

The authenticity of the letter, however, remains unclear. 

Facebook responds

In response to The Verge, Facebook assured that the platform is currently “working to restore” the groups that were mistakenly removed during IReC’s mass reporting warpath. Facebook discovered that content had been “posted to sabotage legitimate, non-violating groups” and will be reversing the bans slapped on them. 

The “Groupocalypse” looks to be over for now — one by one the groups are changing their “Secret” privacy settings back to what it was before. Crossovers Nobody Asked For was revived, and naturally, memes of their temporary dusting came flooding through.  

 

ilyas@asiaone.com