We have Instagram and Twitter pages. Why don’t we have an official #NormalContact Facebook or YouTube page? In a word: privacy.
The #NormalContact site and social media are maintained by volunteers. These volunteers are given significant privacy because anyone and anything that goes against the general narrative these days tends to garner a lot of hate. (That’s why we don’t accept comments on the site, incidentally.) So our volunteers are sheltered from that hate by anonymized accounts and VPN access.
This worked fine for Instagram and Twitter. YouTube was quickly dismissed because Google tracks all the IDs on your device, which would have instantly tied them to the #NormalContact account. Facebook, however, was a pile of problems unique to itself.
Facebook doesn’t have an option for organizational accounts. All company pages have to be tied to an actual person. And Facebook has definitely done what they needed to make it difficult to fake. They disabled the account after they had an email and phone number. To fix it they wanted a picture of a face. (They got one, and it was even a volunteer pic.) …but then they disabled the account again. Now they also wanted an ID or bank statements. While we could totally fake those, it’s clear that FB is going to look for any excuse they can to disable the account. So we’ll pass.
That’s it? No official #NormalContact Facebook page?
Yup! …but that doesn’t mean there can’t be unofficial #NormalContact Facebook pages.
We invite anyone to make an unofficial #NormalContact Facebook page that chooses to do so. If you do set up a #NormalContact Facebook page please follow these guidelines.
- Please make it clear that your page or group is unofficial and point to this site as the official source. Don’t claim any affiliation or support from this official site.
- Be careful to follow the #NormalContact philosophy and keep the focus of your page extremely focused. Try to avoid promoting any specific ideas regarding reopening, etc.
- Feel free to let us know about your page by sending us a link on one of the other platforms. While we can’t promise that we can promote it, we’d love to know about your efforts!
- We strongly recommend that different #NormalContact Facebook pages look for opportunities to cross-promote whenever possible. Work to develop a robust and networked community of people.
It’s a shame that Facebook seems opposed to letting us create an official resource while maintaining anonymity, but that doesn’t stop us from actually building community. Remember to wear your ribbon and use the #NormalContact hashtag.