‘Yorfess’ taken down through mass reporting of racism

A Yorfess backup is already active

| UPDATED

An anonymous confession page used by students at the University York known as ‘Yorfess’ on Facebook has been taken down due to mass reporting of the page regarding racist posts.

In a statement by the page last night the admins stated they were “not letting any political posts through whatsoever” and asked readers to report “any racism in any posts” to them.

The mass reporting of the page to be removed from Facebook follows the statement the University of York sent yesterday, in which the University of York condemned online confession pages for allowing racist posts to have a platform.

Yorfess admins responded to student media with this statement: “We want to emphasise that even those you disagree with, have a right to their own opinion.

“Utter ridiculous was used to describe a mass gathering during a literal pandemic, which is a valid opinion.”

The University of York stated: “It is absolutely unacceptable for anyone to post racist and discriminatory material and we encourage students to join us in reporting such material directly to the platform host”.

The ‘Yorfess’ confession page (not to be confused with the successor of the original Yorfess, Yorfess IV) told the York Tab: “There was a post criticising people for going out and protesting during a literal pandemic.

“The others were all taken out of context and misquoted, so it’s a lot of hot air”.

In a pinned post on their own page, Yorfess IV commented on both ‘Yorfess’ and ‘HezEastFess’: “We’ve been getting a fair amount of submissions regarding the other Yorfess/Hez east pages and their blatantly racist, unsympathetic views towards the BLM movement. We want to acknowledge that we absolutely do not agree with this, we are just as disgusted as the rest of you who have shared your opinions on this. we will refrain from posting most of the submissions we get related to these pages”.

A back up page to ‘Yorfess’, ‘Yorfess Backup’ posted an update on the page last night: “YUSU will not silence us. We won’t make the mistake of posting about politics this time…”

Yorkmemes provided this response to the York Tab:
“We are writing today to condemn YUSU’s recent actions against student-run pages as fundamentally wrong, based on unsubstantiated claims, excessively intimidatory and in violation of the rules and ethos of the Students Union.”
“We, as a student body, condemn YUSU’s statement on non-affiliated confessions pages and request that it either is removed or entirely rewritten to reflect reality.”