September 05, 2013 10:32 AM UTC

BREAKING: Social Media Dirty Tricks Hit Recall Campaigns

• 7 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The above message is reportedly greeting the administrators of the Facebook pages for both Democratic Senators presently defending their seats in recall elections next Tuesday. They cannot post new content even to their personal Facebook pages, and new content posting on both campaign pages has been halted. Within the campaigns for Senate President John Morse and Senator Angela Giron there are several social media administrators, and they have all been similarly blocked this morning according to our sources.

The offending link was apparently a Washington Post story that the admins insist was in no way in violation of Facebook policies. The blocks appear to be the result of a large aggregate number of Facebook users clicking the "Report/Mark as Spam" link on the campaign's Facebook posts. All of the administrators have reportedly appealed these suspensions to Facebook, but as of this writing they remain blocked.

As next Tuesday's recall elections get closer, and nastier, any such opportunity to harass the campaigns will be taken–especially novel ways that might violate commercial policies instead of laws. It seems to us that Facebook ought to have a better way of administering these kinds of complaint systems to prevent abuse, but we have enough problems keeping own blog running smoothly that we're at least sympathetic.

Count your blessings, folks, nobody's jammed anybody's phone banks yet (knock on wood).