After the threatening letter comes the painful response from Facebook: The Facebook page for 'Statutzim Tchitzim' has been permanently removed from the network.
The affair began following an investigation by the Globes newspaper that the popular Facebook page 'Tweeting Statuses' was charging for statuses - contrary to the company's policies, and in response, the company temporarily removed the page from the network last Friday.
Avi Len, the operator of the page 'Status Tweets', published a public and scathing letter today (Wednesday) to Facebook Israel CEO Adi Sofer Thani, in which he wrote, among other things: "Peace to you. This is the sixth day that 'Status Tweets', one of the most important pages in Israel, has been off the air. It was taken down arbitrarily, without any notice and without a hearing process, by Facebook. There is no regulator that acts like this without a hearing. There is no CEO who would not bother to explain or get back to his customers. But in the Facebook dictatorship, there are, it turns out, other rules.".
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
This evening [Thursday], the company decided to announce that the removal of the Facebook page is permanent and not temporary: "We cannot accept attempts to mislead the people who use our service. The page in question repeatedly violated our policy despite the warnings it received, and therefore we have removed it.".
Avi Len responded to the message on his Facebook page. "We are shocked by the brutal conduct. All citizens of the 'Facebook state' knew that a life's work could be erased, that a media outlet of 720,000 people could be shut down overnight - without a hearing, without hearing our side, based only on slander from vested interests and without even understanding the real picture.
"This is like a dictatorial regime. They closed down the number one media outlet for the ordinary citizen, which helped thousands of Israelis whose voices were not heard in traditional media outlets.".
The Facebook page "Statutes Tweeting" is considered one of the most viewed pages in Israel, with over 700,000 fans following it religiously. The page is famous for its orange dove logo, and in recent days a campaign has been underway to restore the page under the name "Release the Orange Bird.".
