Leeds Student Group temporarily suspended due to surge in reports and engagement

Leeds Student Group (LSG) on Facebook has been temporarily suspended by the platform due to a surge in reported posts and engagements this week.

After a busy week in Leeds students Facebook communities, students found themselves unable to view or access the group yesterday evening.

Farris Ramzy, an admin for LSG which boasts 47,000 members, told The Leeds Tab the page has been temporarily suspended.

Despite reluctance to comment on which posts caused the increase in reports and engagements, he said: “The group has been temporarily suspended by Facebook. Nobody can join, post, or like at the moment. We have set up an appeal with Facebook to get the group up and running again.

“I’m reluctant to say too much, but groups are measured on group quality, and the group was hit with a load of reported posts.

“We’re keen to get on top of what’s going on.”

Farris said the group has been inundated with posts and engagements this week, and the admins have been removing copious reported posts: “It’s been a rough week. All of us work or study full time, and we’ve been pulling down posts left right and centre. There are ten of us and, at one point, we were probably pulling down 50 reported posts each an hour.

“Six days ago we received 5000 engagements, and on Tuesday it was 80,000.

Farris said members should report posts to admins, not to Facebook, if they’re unhappy with anything on LSG in order to avoid this happening again: “It’s really frustrating, because on Facebook you have the option to either report to admins, or report to Facebook.

“If people report posts to admins, 99 per cent of the time we’re more than happy to take them down immediately, but when posts are reported to Facebook, it’s a computer dealing with that, and the page can get suspended.

“Facebook is a computer and not a human, but that’s what the appeal is for.”

Farris says the group will likely be running again by Monday: “We’ve launched an appeal and have good contacts at Facebook. These things happen but we will be back up and running in no time. In the meantime if people need to post we’ve set up a temporary group!”

Farris encouraged students to report to admins or message admins if they take issue with anything posted to the group: “My DM’s are always open if there’s any issue anyone has, we will take things down straight away. The last thing we want is for someone to be upset.”

LSG have set up an official temporary group, which you can join here.