Yesterday, the leadership behind a Fallout 76 roleplaying group, called Free States Militia, was suspended from Facebook until February 7. During the lockdown, historic numbers of people found entertainment, solace, and community in gaming. However, the political environment has been such that Free States Militia has been removed from Facebook not once, but twice.
In October of last year, a group of Fallout 76 players had their personal Facebook accounts suspended or banned from Facebook. When TheGamer talked to some of the people involved, we learned that the bans were in connection with the group's roleplaying page. Discussions of raids; weapons and armor; and ongoing in-game operations were flagged by Facebook's automated censors and resulted in precious family memories being lost.
Eventually, after much reporting in gaming circles, Facebook restored the accounts of the admins. Yesterday, however, the leadership of the Free States Militia found that they had once again been wrongly suspended from Facebook due to their roleplaying activities. Many of these discussions are in relation to the ongoing storyline that they have helped craft inside of Fallout 76. Of course, these discussions involve talk of "attacks" and "retribution" but they also involve ghouls, radscorpions, and being a bottlecap millionaire.
As it is, the leadership of the Free States Militia has once again found that they need to figure out how to get their personal accounts unlocked—a task that is not particularly easy when you are dealing with a company that handles billions of active accounts. Despite being in the spotlight for wrongful suspensions just three months ago, Facebook appears to have made the same mistake for exactly the same reasons as the last time that this happened.
Following the previous incident, the group took special precautions with their official Twitter account to mention that it was in relation to a video game, and not a real-world militia group that carries plasma rifles. Members of the group have vowed to take their gaming discussions off of Facebook and to conduct them on Discord instead, in an effort to prevent yet another incident suspension.
These roleplayers, in particular, took part in a fundraising effort last month that saw over 200 streamers and content creators get together to raise money for St. Jude's hospital. As of this writing, the admins still don't have access to their personal accounts.