Renewed Facebook Ban for Brentford Today & TV
This time Meta says suspension due to 'cybersecurity'
Brentford Today and TV was set up in 2019
June 11, 2025
The return of the popular Facebook group, Brentford Today & TV, has turned out to be short-lived with access to users restored last Friday (6 June) only to be taken away again at the weekend.
This time Meta, the company which owns Facebook, has given the explanation of ‘cybersecurity’ without further explanation. John Dale, who runs the group, has appealed and, as happened last time, a prompt response was promised but he has heard nothing. It is believed both suspensions done on an automated basis and not by human intervention.
Posts that were made by Mr Dale during the brief time the group was operational have been removed by Meta. His profile has also been removed leading to the disappearance of posts he made on the group.
The pages on Facebook giving explanations as to why a group might be suspended for cybersecurity reasons gives a number of examples of suspicious activities such as log in attempts from a number of different locations or changes to log in details or authentication methods, however none of these applies in the case of Brentford Today & TV.
It is thought possible that a third party maybe exploiting weaknesses in the Meta reporting and moderation systems to interfere with the operation of the group.
Following the latest suspension the Hounslow Green Party has joined voices from across the political spectrum. It is organising a campaign calling for Brentford Today & TV to be re-instated and local members are emailing local MPs, councillors and others asking them to give their support and to email Facebook.
Meta admitted earlier this year that up to a fifth of enforcement actions were mistakes—defined as removing or demoting content that didn’t violate their policies. It says that it is pivoting from broad automated takedowns to a more targeted approach—focusing automation on high-severity issues (e.g. terrorism, child sexual exploitation) and requiring user reports and higher confidence for removing lower-severity content. However, its systems still appear to be imprecise and reportedly it is still flagging or suspending legitimate accounts before human review catches the error.
Meta has still not responded to our request for a comment on this matter.
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