Social networking site ‘Facebook’ finally restored the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) page on Wednesday a week after they had deleted it for unknown reasons, bringing a sigh of relief to close to a million followers from amateurs to top shooters.
After the ISSF had asked the entire sports shooting fraternity across the world to come together and show solidarity in its bid to get Facebook to reverse its decision, a large number of shooters had expressed their displeasure over the social networking site’s arbitrary decision.
Several shooters posted messages on various social networking sites, wanting to know the reason behind Facebook’s move.
In a message after the page was restored, ISSF thanked everyone for their support and also welcomed Facebook’s move. “Dear friends, we are glad to inform you that with your help we returned our page on Facebook! We would like to thank you for all your support which we have all these days.
“It’s very important for us. Because of this team work, all of us can continue using the ISSF official group on FB. And we would like to thank Facebook who unlocked it,” the ISSF said in a statement on its website.
It may be recalled that the shooting sports fraternity was caught off-guard last week after it found that the ISSF page on Facebook had been deleted. Shooters from across the world rely for latest updates from ISSF on its Facebook page which was created on 14th January 2010.
Reportedly, Facebook had deleted the page without giving any reason or warning to ISSF. The ISSF, which has its headquarters in Munich, had said in a statement on its website last Wednesday that: “An unpleasant situation happened yesterday, and Facebook has deleted the ISSF page from the social network without reason or warning. At the moment, we are looking into what happened and stay with you on the official website, Instagram and Twitter.”
ISSF had sought the support of the entire sports shooting community saying, “We kindly ask you to support us…please use the hashtag #unblock_ISSF_facebook for our support.”
Though it is not known why Facebook had deleted a verified ISSF account in the first place, one of the reasons could be because the social networking site has a very stringent policy on firearms, which as per their regulations, is against their community standards. Facebook also has a policy, which prohibits “advertisements promoting the brandishing of firearms”.
