Yes - It finally happened - I've been banned from a number of websites in and around my home town of Hendersonville NC. Why? Apparently the image attached to this post tells the entire story. A few days ago, on the facebook page, Hendersonville Happenings, someone complained that my art was nothing but disguised pornography.
Then, the very next day, there was a coordinated attack on my facebook page, and someone in the Dana, NC area (according to FB records) hijacked my Facebook page and redirected all of my posts for over 80% of my art to an actual pornography website. The reaction from the Facebook Groups administrators and the Facebook algorithms was swift and harsh.
Over an 8 hour period, I watched as I received notice after notice that my work was being taken off of Facebook for violating community standards. Facebook also flagged me as a violator of community standards, and about 1/3 of the groups to which I belong, outright banned me for life.
The sad part about this is that I had absolutely nothing to do with it.
In the 8 hours that it took Facebook and I to literally wrestle control of my page back to me, my presence on the groups on which I promote my work was almost completely destroyed by a hacker. Although I have to give credit to some group administrators for contacting me to determine what was going on and how to resolve it, others just banned me for life and flagged me as a cybercriminal.
To whoever did the attack on my facebook page and caused all of this havoc, I want to say if you are seeing pornography in my work, that is on you and your sick mind. To the administrators of the groups that banned me, I wish you'd allow me back. All of this was caused by some sick individual who for some reason has an axe to grind with my work.
While on the facebook groups, this is not my first run-in with a small number of people who frequent those groups. If businesses can be allowed to promote alcohol consumption at bars, musicians who play at them (a different genre of art), dating services that I know get exploited by a number of ill-intentioned people, and a variety of other announcements that carry a true risk of personal injury (e.g. drunk driving accidents from a person who attended one of these drinking events), then why is my work so dangerous?
Like the musicians and alcohol consumption venues that promote these 'events', announcement of my work that has won both national and international awards is an event or happening in the local community too. It also seems that my participation in a local Art event is a happening as well. But, because it is not an event that people can go to and get wasted, apparently promotion of my work is a violation of community standards.
A number of these groups from which I am now banned also specifically state in their guidelines that no personal promotion is allowed. When this was given as a reason for axing several of my announcements, I went back to the group where the admin had a problem with me and categorized the last 100 posts. 97 of the 100 posts were for musicians playing at drinking events, yard sales, and a variety of other businesses that, like D'Day Photogrqphic Art, had items for sale to benefit owners of those businesses. So why is my business different?
Also, I just had my second book of work published, and that seems to me to be an event worthy of announcement on these community groups, but thanks to some twisted individual, that is not going to occur because they successfully got me labeled as a cybercriminal. I guess art is just plain dangerous and scary to some people.
So that is what happened. I'm picking up the pieces and moving on.