The founder of a social media page highlighting crime and anti-social behaviour in Alice Springs says his Facebook account has been temporarily suspended, barring him from sharing content with his more than 60,000 followers.
Key points:
- The man behind the Facebook page Action for Alice says his account has been temporarily suspended
- A town councillor says many in the local community feel silenced by the loss of the page
- A social media expert has warned of negative consequences of posting crime content to social media
Darren Clark, a local business owner and the man behind Action for Alice 2020, claimed there were ongoing attempts to “shut down” his page, which has rapidly amassed thousands of new followers — both locally and from afar — as crime and alcohol-fuelled violence in the outback town makes national media headlines.
The baker and outspoken government critic said he was notified by Facebook that his account would be restricted for one week for “bullying and harassment” after he posted a video of brawling youths.
He said following correspondence with Facebook the ban was extended to 28 days.
“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,” Mr Clark said.
“Everyone thinks the town has died down and there’s no crime. I can tell you there’s a hell of a lot of stuff that’s going on.”
It comes as his bakery was broken into and trashed again at the weekend.
Mr Clark said he believed Action for Alice had helped secure a visit to the town by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in January, and the subsequent $250 million Commonwealth funding package for the region.
“We don’t have a local newspaper, we don’t have a local TV station, so 90 per cent of the gear that I put up, no-one would have known about,” he said.
“People were suffering. It was hearsay, it was talked about at barbecues, people had had enough.
“I actually gave it a platform for it all to be seen, and so I provided all the evidence and all the proof that these things were happening.”
The page has faced some criticism for hosting racist comments and promoting violence, which Mr Clark said he had always tried to address quickly.
Alice Springs town councillor Marli Banks said, despite some issues with the page, pulling it down was “not the answer”.
“People feel silenced,” she said.
“When you try to control and interrupt a grassroots page like Action For Alice, it covers up the very real issues we face.”
Cr Banks, a local business owner, said she believed there had been a concerted effort by the NT government to have the page removed.
“Whether we like it or not, the page has a massive following and represents the genuine concerns of the local community,” she said.
“People turn to the page because it’s often the case that police simply can’t respond fast enough.”
‘Negatives outweigh the positives’
Belinda Barnet, an expert on media regulation at Swinburne University, said while this type of page can sometimes help keep the community informed, she held concerns about the consequences of sharing crime content.
“The negatives would outweigh the benefits, particularly when you’re posting violent crime in video form to social media,” Dr Barnet said.
“Besides potentially identifying the person in the video, which is not good if they’re a kid … people tend to make abusive comments, the content can snowball, and I’m worried about this kind of content inspiring vigilante behaviour and trolling.
“It’s never a good idea to post violent content on social media.”
Dr Barnet also warned that young people who saw content of themselves on the page could view it as “gaining some kind of kudos or notoriety”.
“That, in a sense, is rewarding them,” she said.
“If you post that content anywhere on social media, the kind of behaviour it will encourage online and offline is not conducive to a good community.”
She said there were better ways of drawing attention to a crime problem, such as interviewing victims of crime, instead of posting videos of the behaviour.
Action for Alice broadens horizons
The Action for Alice admin, Mr Clark, said he planned to expand his platform beyond Facebook and Alice Springs to bring attention to crime problems in other parts of the country.
“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 anymore.
“All these communities have cried out like Alice Springs and they’ve got no attention.”
Mr Clark said he had also counselled people struggling with their mental health, who had reached out to him via the Facebook page for help.
A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said an investigation into the page found posts were “correctly removed for violating our bullying and harassment policies”.
“We may place restrictions on pages and admins that repeatedly break our rules. For example, we may temporarily restrict them from posting, commenting, or sending messages,” the spokesperson said.
