The websites of Facebook critic group the Real Facebook Oversight Board are down, tweeted the group’s founder Carole Cadwalladr on Thursday, October 8.

Cadwalladr, in her tweet, showed two letters that explained why the websites – realfacebookoversight.com and realfacebookoversight.org – are currently down.

In the case of realfacebookoversight.com, the letter shows Facebook telling what appears to be the site’s web hosting provider that the site was in violation of the Facebook trademark.

In the case of realfacebookoversight.org, the site’s web hosting provider SupportNation tells Cadwalladr that the site was being taken down for impersonating Facebook. 

The site contains information about the group, its members, and its goals of pressing Facebook for crucial changes as the United States heads to the presidential polls on November 3. These are the current 3 demands from the group: 

After the launch of the group on September 25 and its first livestreamed meeting on September 30, Facebook on Wednesday, October 7, announced it was banning all QAnon groups and pages on Facebook and Instagram – a far stricter enforcement against the infamous conspiracy theory movement.

On Thursday, October 8, the platform then announced that it would ban all political ads after the US presidential election, which is critical in preventing ads that claim early victory declarations that may discourage those who are just about to vote. The ban is an extension of an earlier announcement that bans political ads a week before the elections.

Content previously on the Real Facebook Oversight Board websites are temporarily being hosted on the website of The Citizens, the advocacy group that developed the board. 

Facebook has faced criticism from users replying to Cadwalladr’s tweet, accusing the corporate giant of silencing a critical voice, pursuing legal means without restraint akin to an authoritarian leader.

Cadwalladr is a journalist at The Guardian and Observer who broke the story on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018. – Rappler.com