An influential Alice Springs crime Facebook page, Action for Alice 2020, has been suspended for “bullying and harassment”.
Earlier this month, Crikey reported on the controversial Facebook page which posts photographs and videos of alleged crime and antisocial behaviour to its 60,000 followers. The page’s posts — which predominantly depict Indigenous Australians, including young locals — has fuelled racism and calls for vigilante justice from its followers.
The page’s founder, Darren Clark, is a local baker and recipient of federal funding for promoting food security in remote Indigenous communities. He defended the page, saying critics should instead “focus on the people at risk here”.
Now the Facebook page has been restricted by Meta for “bullying and harassment” after posting a video of fighting youths, ABC News reports.
Clark told the ABC that the ban was extended to a month after he spoke to Facebook: “This one was pretty tame, compared to a lot of other stuff that’s been on social media and other stuff that I’ve posted in the past.”
Undeterred, Clark said he intended to expand beyond Facebook and Alice Springs into new platforms and locations.
“We’ll take this to Twitter now. We’ll start a YouTube channel, so [just you wait] if you think we’re big now,” he said. “We’ll broaden this now and we’ll make this a northern Australian site, and we’ll bring the top half of Australia together, and we’ll show the federal government what exactly is going on because they can’t hide it any more.”
I got suspended for saying I hoped the dust from Chernobyl would choke Putin’s soldiers. Seriously though there is a major ongoing issue in the world of Indigenous Australia and a f’wit on FB will not solve it. It is not good screaming lock them up, we nee to prevent the cries happenijng and harsh sentences don’t work. If they did ther would be no murders committed in the US. I see similar thing in my home town on a much reduced scale. We have a small but noticeable number of Indigenous kids who are engaged in criminality from age 9 or 10 on. What happens is nothing till they turn 16 then they get sent to Juvenile. A consequence needs to apply to the young offender, no not locking up! Parental responsibility must be made to occur as well. Where there is a consequence that is measured and supoprt is there, recurrence is rare. Otherwise it is constant. I had a grade 6 kid tell me once that he might do something stupid in about October. Aghast, I asked why. He answered Christmas is good in there mister, you get a good feed and everything. He was going OK with us too, but his dad came out of jail and took him out bush. One of the local teens told me he had taken his own life about 12 months on. He was wild, unguided, stupid and cranky sometimes, but he was basically an Ok kid who needed a lot of love, a good clip around the ear now and then and something to aspire to. I remember his being thrilled that he had stayed in the rules enough to represent our school in x-country. I will also remember feeling shattered.
Rupert Murdoch did away with our local newspaper, The Centralian Advocate several years ago.
our local paper gave us a sense of community with its hatched, catched and dispatched section. Pictures of new babies, black and white, the sports section, photos of black and white players together , and sometimes some semi decent articles unlike the surviving Darwin NTNews.
The local ABC Alice Springs only seems to add general news stories to their website every 3days or so.
so, I reluctantly turned to the Action for Alice for news of what’s happening in town.
Few balancing good news stories, all crime and comments many of which are made by outsiders from across Australia, and beyond.
The website has brought the state of our town to national attention which is good and bad, good in that maybe now people black and white will be listened to, bad in that mob and Central Australia will again be used as a political football accompanied by knee jerk policies that do more harm than good.
O for a decent local newspaper with some balanced reporting.
At 12:15 on 23/2/23 it appears not suspended… https://www.facebook.com/Action-for-Alice-2020-111304870409274