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Facebook accidentally bans ‘Fallout 76’ role-play clan The Free States Militia

The Free States Militia are a group of super committed role players who live and breathe that Fallout 76 life, but that’s not what Facebook saw.

Within The Free States Militia group of brethren you can find lengthy in-character posts, hundreds of screenshots of great Fallout 76 moments, and plans for in-game domination.

Despite changing their name to the FSM Playstation Video Game Club in relation to a prior warning, The Free State Militia are popping again as they’ve copped a lengthy ban from Facebook as part of a purge of violent, right-wing Facebook groups, Twitter pages and thirst trap Instagrams. That last one might not be real.

Fallout 76 Sniper

In direct opposition to a standing policy of letting wild speech run pretty free, the last couple of weeks have seen a mass exodus of real-world violence instigators from major social media platforms. The Free States Militia have been caught in this crossfire and have sparked an interesting chat about what this means for gaming groups on the social media giant.

Frustratingly, The Free States Militia have been unable to reach a human at Facebook, and have had to patch together reasons for their ban from guesswork. It’s pretty easy to see why a bot would see an organisation promoting descriptions of violent deeds as a no-go zone, but it’s a whole lot less threatening when you realise it’s just Damo and Darren going hard in the Fallout paint.

What this means for other groups hoping to use Facebook as an organisational tool is a definite directive to err on the side of caution. Losing hundreds or thousands of hours of work in the space of an afternoon is far from the ideal.

Feel free to follow the saga with FSM’s Twitter.