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- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor

Last evening we published an article about theft and vandalism at the Wiarton Salvation Army. That story was opened over 6500 times on the OwenSoundHub.org website - a testament to the sharing of the story on dozens of Facebook and Twitter accounts.

At the same time, as the editor of the Owen Sound Hub, I was rendered unable to post or share a post on Facebook on my own account,  nor to share the posts of others on the Owen Sound Hub Facebook page. I receive the message

Sorry, this feature isn't available right now

 An error occurred while processing this request. Please try again later. If you think this doesn't go against our Community Standards let us know.
 
This has, as you can understand, severely restricted the work I do. As far as we can determine, it is Facebook's response to complaints of posts that violate their community standards, and can last up to 30 days with no appeal process.
 
We have always encouraged you to flip through OwenSoundHub.org directly, and not rely on Mr. Zuckerberg to curate your local Owen Sound news.  But we also know you love Facebook, and more than 90% of you never look at a Hub story that Mr. Z. didn't put into your newsfeed.
 
In the past two weeks, we spent a day off-line, considerable staff time and some cash because a hacker put a "data mining" page on our site.
 
We feel vulnerable, to say the least.  We've worked hard to publish your neighbours' stories and keep you up to date on your community.  And we'll do it as long as the enormous monopolies of the internet allow us to.  It's as simple as that.