Facebook pages ‘resembled Dodge City saloon fight’

KEVIN BENNETT, Woodhall Close, Darfield

We know that social media is the Wild West so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Facebook turned into the Gunfight at the OK Corral during our local elections.

Reform UK runs, amongst other pages, an anti-crime anti-social behaviour page that has thousands of followers.

Facebook says the administrator is Penistone Reform UK candidate David Wood. He lost.

These followers would have clicked in about three weeks ago to find the page rebranded as Reform UK, complete with anti-foreigner memes interspersed with the usual grainy videos of hoodies trying car doors.

So if a kid wants to find out what happened to his stolen bike, he has a pile of right wing propaganda to wade through first.

Dissenting voices are quickly banned.

At least no-one is in any doubt about the allegiance of this Reform UK ‘crime’ page.

Barnsley Labour takes a different approach.

Athersley and Darton have ‘community pages’ in green and yellow with no Labour branding in sight.

The administrators are listed as Ian H Brown and Gez Morrall. Coincidentally a Dodworth Labour candidate (lost) and a Labour election agent.

Three weeks or so out of from the election, they filled the pages up with adverts for Labour Darton candidate Theresa Wilcockson (also lost).

Of course, a candidate or activist can run a community page but why hide the ownership?

Andy Wray the indie in Hoyland runs a page that does what it says on the tin as does Jake Lodge in Worsbrough.

The Lib Dems run a couple of community pages displaying their name, logo, colour and legal requirements.

I don’t think that even the local

Tories run disguised FB pages. Let’s say that again – not even the Tories.

So why should we care if these two parties resemble a saloon fight in Dodge?

It’s because readers will think it’s an independent opinion they are looking at, not party propaganda, so it will carry more weight. This is why they do it.

Depressingly, there’s no likelihood of a sheriff riding in and cleaning up this cyber town.

Our undermanned police obviously have real world crime to prioritise and Facebook are more interested in policing rude words.

So take care while on ‘vanilla’ community pages – they may be run by altruistic community minded individuals, or they may be Labour/Reform activists building up a following with community posts while hiding who they really are until election time.

Maybe these cowboy administrators would like to write in and explain?