How Facebook and Instagram are trying to kill off Olympic shooting

With Team GB bringing home medals from Paris 2024, we asked the Fieldsports Channel audience to tell us about their experiences chatting about their pastimes – guns, shooting and hunting – on Facebook and Instagram. The results are not positive for the Meta management. Just 15% said they had encountered no difficulties. For the rest, they faced punishments ranging from ‘Facebook jailtime’ to outright bans. Here are the results of the survey.

[PK-YTMusic]

Let's be honest, it's the MSM, the BBC and ITV are great examples for not covering our sport, it could be considered as a part of our culture too so at the cost of not provoking or advertising to city and suburban youth gangs we all have to be canceled.

[richardt.]

As always, the guys on this Fieldsports channel are doing a stand up job.
Thank you so much for all the work you do.

Re social media, i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like.

I don't have a problem with it!

I JUST DON'T USE IT.

[The-Ratbasher]

I received a permenant ban from buying and selling on Facebook after advertising a Yukon Photon scope. Not a sign of any gun, nor was shooting even mentioned in my post. But, I was in the wrong, obviously. Appeal totally ignored.

[leevespa]

Couldnt even sell my archery gear on market place and was banned by face book on buying or selling on marketplace!!!!

[ParzivalPheonix]

Try searching anything shooting related on a work computer.

[joelhall]

I follow a few target shooting pages and groups on Facebook, but they do have to be careful about posts.

[rossholmes]

Greetings from Australia...and I thought the Americans were the most paranoid...not so it seems.

[MontyShoots]

Meta’s policies are implemented globally so we’re subjected to a more stringent expectation, based predominantly on American tragedies and the resulting political pressure.

Often we fall foul of their community guidelines for very avoidable reasons. For example the private sale of guns and anything related is strictly prohibited. People posting on a buy and sell section of a reloading page will get taken down every time because Meta and its moderators don’t know if an individual is an RFD or license holder. They just see an individual (not a business) buying and selling ammunition.

[guy]

Those businesses this will most affect are those who leverage too much of their online visibility through social media. If you’re using Facebook - and invariably it is Facebook - as a substitute for a well-optimised website then you’re vulnerable to the whims of Meta’s anti-gun AI restrictions. Yes, a website costs more and you need to devote some time to updating it and writing content that will get it to come up high in search engine searches but you get total control. Use FB, Instagram and other platforms as an adjunct and landing platform by all means, but don’t rely on it entirely. That’s putting all your eggs in one broken basket.

[ccsnjf]

The content of the video is valid - your headline is clickbait - I thought you guys were better than that. Meta are not actively trying to kill of Olympic shooting - or any shooting sport. Incompetence, mistakes, disinterest, automated machine learning systems not being very good etc are different to actively conspiring to kill off anything. We are being hit by the former - not that latter.