The founder of the Shiteventersunite Facebook group that has been disabled, thought to be over the use of the word “hack”, said it will be the equine charities who suffer.
Founder Cressida Kitchin-Townshend told H&H the main concern is that the 2023 SEU calendars and 2022 Christmas cards had gone on sale, with the aim of topping the £12,000 raised last year for World Horse Welfare. She immediately set up another replacement group but this has only got about 10,000 members so far.
“It’s been a complete nightmare,” she said. “It’s the same as last time, we’ve just been left in the dark about why it’s happened.”
Cressida said that after the group was last deleted, she and her team engaged the service of a social media professional to try to ensure the group was allowed to continue. The second incarnation did reappear on Friday night (4 November) but had gone again by this morning (9 November).
“We have profanity filters on, everything gets checked, we’re so fastidious about it,” she said. “It says if you have two strikes in a short time, it puts the group at risk but we haven’t had any. One of the admins got flagged two months ago for telling someone not to use a certain word, then two weeks ago, a member messaged me. She asked why her post was taken down and she’d been muted and I said ‘That wasn’t us, it was Facebook’. That was a post that said ‘When your cousin asks you to come on a hack’. The notification said the standards were to protect against things like fraud and security breaches; they’ve obviously misunderstood the word ‘hack’. But you can’t speak to or get hold of anyone about it.”
Cressida said the calendars and cards are still available on the SEU website, and there is a “hub” that was being set up for this eventuality but was not quite ready.
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“If it was after Christmas, it wouldn’t be as bad,” she said. “What really upsets me is that last year we raised £12,000 for World Horse Welfare and now with no group, we’re not selling anything. This would have been our prime fundraising time, but there’s no comeback.”
Cressida said the group has raised thousands of pounds for other good causes, such as helping equestrians in Australia after the floods, and in Ukraine.
“We’re so big on anti-bullying, and we don’t allow any negativity,” she said. “It takes hours of my time, into trying to do something good. I get people saying things like ‘My daughter fell off and instead of crying, she just wanted to know if it was on video’; we’re so pleased with things like that and there’s the fundraising too so this is a real kick in the teeth.”
She added: “We’re discussing everyone getting their Shetlands together and turning up at Facebook’s office to protest – can you imagine!”
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
