Facebook apologises over another Effin error
NINE years ago a lady from Effin took on social networking behemoth Facebook and won.
The story went global after Ann Marie Kennedy started an online campaign to allow Effin be put into the homeplace section of the villagers’ profile pages.
Nine years on Facebook still has an Effin issue. Francis Dunne, from Weston, was watching a Facebook livestream last month and the subject of Facebook policy came up.
“I remembered the story about people in Effin trying to set up a page and I posted about it,” said Francis. He wrote: “You should look up the town of Effin in Ireland. All the Effin people wanted was an Effin Facebook page.”
Francis then got a message to say: “This comment goes against our community standards on harassment and bullying.” His Facebook account was suspended for 24 hours.
“Effin received that treatment because some underpaid moderator in an office in Asia never heard of the place. If a user from Ireland is reported it should be looked into by a user from Ireland,” said Francis.
However, the Effin mistake was spotted by Facebook. The account suspension was lifted early and the message: “We're sorry we got this wrong.” Effin 2, Facebook 0.
The Leader contacted Ann Marie who said nearly nine years on after the Effin Facebook battle the story never grows old and won’t go away!
“It was an exciting time in our parish as the Effin hurling team had won the county junior hurling and went on to win the intermediate in 2011 and beyond our wildest dreams went up to senior hurling in 11 months. We just wanted to proclaim on our own Facebook pages that Effin was our hometown but the whole story went viral around the world. I heard from friends and family in Moscow, Australia, USA, that the story had reached their media channels.
“The issue was that Facebook wouldn’t recognise Effin as a real place. They claimed no place existed! This opened up the gates with other areas coming forward to say they had issues with getting their areas recognised as legitimate areas by Facebook. Facebook was and appears to be a faceless organisation, and it was very difficult to get to talk to someone directly to explain our issue. I was contacted by their PR agency by email to see what the issue was. Eventually because of global pressure Facebook admitted it was an issue with their mapping system, they must have changed something with their algorithms and over the Christmas we were able to put Effin as our hometown,” said Ann Marie.
It was a good news story and a bit of fun at the time when the economy was not in good shape and there was a lot of bad news around, she said.
“It was nice to see our parish doing well in the hurling and having Effin in the news for a good reason. Our ex-pats got a great kick from seeing our little rural parish in the news all over the world,” said Ann Marie.
Regarding Francis’ Effin problem with Facebook, she said, “Thankfully they came back and said they were sorry and unblocked the user’s account, but it’s good to hear that Effin is proving to still be a thorn in Facebook’s side and keeping them on their toes. As we say in Effin ‘for the parish’.”