Citizen Journalists Claim Facebook Censorship After Page Was ‘Unpublished’ by ‘Mistake’

The popular “100 Percent FED UP” page was censored by Facebook, its curators said.

“It’s a sickening feeling to know you’re being censored not for any horrible thing you’ve done, but for trying to tell the truth to millions of people. Are we living in America? Seriously, our First Amendment rights have been slowly eroding away bit by bit.”

Leisa and Patty, who wished to only be identified by their first names because of threats, started the Facebook page when they became “frustrated by so-called journalists” and were inspired by Andrew Breitbart. The citizen journalists say they were both stay-at-home moms with three girls. They met at a fundraiser at Patty’s house.

Leisa said, “We were blessed to meet and hear Andrew Breitbart speak at a small, private event in Michigan just one week before he died. Inspired by his work and his passion to save America, we started a Facebook page to honor his legacy.”

Leisa told Breitbart Texas, “We lost our dealership in the bailout, and our congressman is our neighbor who’s a puppet for the unions and Obama. I was never in politics until that happened. Patty had worked on other campaigns and had always been involved in politics.” She added, “I would say honestly that meeting and listening to Andrew Breitbart was life changing. He knew the evil we were up against and that this is truly a war against the left.” She called “Obama’s bailout of GM” – “a closing of certain dealerships and then the ‘gifting’ of those dealerships to someone else.”

100 Percent FED UP now has 872,000 followers on Facebook, and 10.2K followers on Twitter. The day before the Facebook page was taken down, they had 3.4 million views; 11.4 million views in the days/week before they were shut down. The average reach on another page they manage, “Just Say NO To Hillary” has 3.5 million views a week.

They told Breitbart Texas, “When we woke-up and saw a note at the top of our Facebook page, with no explanation as to why, telling us that our page had been ‘unpublished and cannot be published again,’ our greatest fear was realized.

Leisa added, “The 100 Percent FED UP Facebook page was borne out of frustration by Patty and I after we discovered how far left our media had become. We were frustrated by the lack of desire by so-called journalists to investigate corrupt dealings with our politicians in Washington, or to reveal the truth about illegal immigration, or the abuse of our veterans, entitlement programs and so much more.”

Leisa and Patty say they work 10-12 hours every day, 7 days a week. They say they are inspired “To get the truth out to as many people as possible.” They, like many Americans, believe the country is in serious trouble.

“Every day we see new news that helps to confirm how critical it is to clean house starting with our elected officials and branching out into every single government agency. We consider every day that we wake-up to find our Facebook page is still published a blessing. Our biggest fear was that right before the election, Facebook would shut us down and silence our voice with no explanation for us or for our 872K followers.”

When asked why they thought their Facebook page was taken down they replied, “We were one of the first websites/Facebook pages to break the Megyn Kelly – Newt Gingrich story last night. It went pretty viral on our page and that may have had something to do with it.”

“The more likely scenario I believe, is the other story we posted just before our page got shut down. It was a story about George Soros. It started with the caption, ‘CROOKED SOROS.’ One of our readers pointed out that YouTube had also removed the video we used in the Soros story right after our site went down. I went to our article on our website and sure enough, the video I used that had a sizable amount of views, and had been posted for a while on YouTube was removed. I found a similar video with clips of Soros and re-posted it with a message. I can’t say for certain that the Soros story caused the shut down, but I do question the timing, and the fact that the video was taken down from YouTube at, or around the same time. The Soros video is of him saying the election is a ‘done deal’ and that Hillary will get the electoral votes to win, but Trump will take the popular vote.”

Patty also noted that the most recent posts “pointed out lies being told by the media. The others are mostly evidence that the media is lying about Trump being down in the polls.” She added, “There were two stories about specific media sources working with Hillary. One post is about voter fraud in Texas, and we used Breitbart as a source. Every one of these stories got tons of views and shares.”

The page was reinstated a few hours later by a Facebook contact assigned to conservative pages “as a liaison of sorts for unwarranted punitive actions taken by Facebook employees.”

Once the issue was “fixed” and the page was republished, a Facebook representative simply sent them an email message stating that it was a “mistake.”

“We never found out why we were closed down. Like so many other conservative pages, we were just left to the mercy of the Facebook rep and her discretion.”

“It’s really harsh and unjust for conservative content to be so scrutinized while there are disgusting things on Facebook I’ve reported yet they remain.”

Leisa and Patty say that a year ago they realized the posts from their 100 Percent FED UP page were no longer showing up in the news feed. “It was then that we began to (reluctantly) advertise with Facebook. Like magic, our posts started to show-up again in the news feed and our readers began to comment about how happy they were to see us again. We spend money every day with Facebook on an ongoing ad campaign and would hope that as a paying customer (who spends quite a bit of money with them) we would have been treated a little better than to wake up with a notification saying we were shut down with no reason or explanation given.”