Facebook blocking Daily Dispatch

Despite repeated complaints, Facebook is not lifting a ban on posting articles from Daily Dispatch, a major newspaper in South Africa. Since Facebook mostly provides free services in huge bulk, they do not have easily-accessed contact information like phone numbers where you can reach a human.

How can this happen? It could be a glitch but it is a convenient excuse that a paper publishing stories deeply embarrassing to the government is being blocked in the heat of an election. While FB is unlikely to be behind this, that they could have done this unintentionally or in response to a bogus scam or spam report is bad enough. That they are unresponsive to complaints makes it worse.

I am working on fixing this as are others. Until we get it right here are a few juicy things from DD that someone doesn’t want us to see.

•  Zuma knows ANC can be used as vehicle to loot
• R100-million in Eastern Cape government funds intended to Nelson Mandela’s funeral treated as a slush fund; a few details:
• ANC regional secretary of Buffalo City Municipality Pumlani Mkolo pilfered R130,000 from funds intended for the Mandela funeral for his girlfriend
• R1.38-million used to buy ANC T-shirts
• How the ANC’s secret police control election party list
• Why political funding should be reformed
• Cartoon – there has to be a good story somewhere here
  
•  Mayor spends ratepayers’ money on ANC trip
• 16 April East London Election debate (ANC missing in action)

This is a start – post links in comments and I will add them here if good.