Facebook shuts down ‘OinK — Only in Korea’ group
One of the largest Korea-based online communities disappeared from the internet around 1 p.m. last Wednesday. According to its founder Travis Hull and moderators, Facebook deleted the 28,000-member group “OinK — Only in Korea” without warning or explanation.
“Absolutely no word from the folks at Facebook so far,” Hull told The Korea Times. “We have petitioned Facebook to review their decision via a link they provide in their help section, but so far we have received no comment from the company and I’m not holding my breath that we will.”
Blame started flying immediately after the group disappeared, with nobody fully sure what caused the sudden removal. Speculation ranged from too many posts flagged for racism or “anti-racist” moderators limiting free speech, to a discussion about an actual crime, in which a member accused another of a serious crime and threats of retaliation were made.
“We might never know what caused our removal as Facebook is notorious for not revealing such details when they make decisions like this,” Hull said. “We suspect certain posts were reported to Facebook and that triggered an algorithm within their system which caused our removal. It doesn’t seem from appearance that much human thought went into the decision, if any.”
Immediately after the group went missing, moderators created a second group and started inviting members to rejoin. It reached 844 members on Tuesday afternoon, at which point Facebook disabled it as well, posting a notice that it had “content that goes against our community standards.” The page is currently under a Facebook review to determine whether it should be restored or permanently deleted.
Meanwhile, the open Facebook page remains untouched, with over 5,400 followers, and OinK is also active on Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. Various other imitator groups and pages bearing a similar name also exist, some run by banned members to rival the original.
“I also own oinkorea.com which I plan to develop as a failsafe against being de-platformed completely in the future,” said Hull, who lived in Korea for 10 years and has run OinK for five years.
Originally started as a light-hearted group among friends for sharing humorous posts, OinK gained a reputation, as it grew, for toxic discussions that often devolved into racism, cyberbullying and defamation. Group moderators were unable to police all active conversations 24 hours a day, and their decisions tended to receive flak. Banned members are known to have rallied on other platforms and created troll accounts to re-enter OinK.
“We are suffering from troll infestation and harassment by individuals who couldn’t live up to our community standards,” Hull said.
“Running a large group like OinK is a massive challenge for myself and the admins on our team, but we look forward to the challenge because we are all genuinely interested in Korea and promoting it to the world.”
A Facebook Korea representative told The Korea Times that Facebook does not usually comment on cases like this.