Newspaper peeved at non-response by Facebook after it is hacked
THE SEARCHLIGHT newspaper, one of the three weekly tabloids published in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, has described as “callous” the response of Meta, the owners of Facebook and Instagram, after hackers took over its Facebook page in January.
“The company has reported the breach to Meta using all available means, to no avail,” editor, Corletha Ollivierre said.
Hackers have taken over Searchlight’s Facebook page, which the company spent over a decade curating, to the point that it has amassed 73,000 followers.
The company complained of the same inaction on the part of Meta that triggered a March 5 letter by 41 attorneys general in the United States to the social media giant.
In the letter, the National Association of Attorneys General pointed out to Meta that while account takeovers are not a new phenomenon, “the frequency and persistence of account takeovers on Meta-owned platforms puts it in a league of its own”.
In a statement, Searchlight said that not even the Royal St Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force had been able to get the attention of Meta.
The newspaper said that it first noticed unusual activity on its Facebook page on January 31, this year, when all its administrators were logged out, and then denied access to the page.
“There was no further activity on the page until March 6, when posts of a sexually provocative nature began appearing on the page and in its Facebook stories,” the publication said.
Ollivierre said “in the meantime, untold reputational damage is being done to our brand.
“Our company was founded in 1995 by a small group of Vincentians and it is frustrating to look on at the destruction of our hard work over the last 28 years and not be able to do anything.
“Meta has told us that their records do not show that we set up this page or that we are administrators. We find that strange, because we verified our ownership of the page with Meta a few years ago, so they know who we are. They have documents that attest to Interactive Media Limited’s ownership of the page.”