Facebook shuts, reinstates R18+ for games group

But Grow Up Australia’s existence has been dealt a major blow this morning, with Facebook removing the group due to violations of the site’s terms of use. Grow Up Australia’s organisers seemed to have rallied quickly, however, setting up a new group with the same name (albeit with a small fraction of its old group's fans). On this new page, group organisers have posted a wall message saying the page was a "temporary place holder while we attempt to contact Facebook and resolve the issue at hand. We have also taken the precaution to disable posts on this page (for now), while the issue regarding 'inappropriate material' is resolved."

According to Facebook’s terms of use, the site can "stop providing all or part of Facebook" if it finds content that is "hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence." For a page to be taken down, a user of Facebook must report the offending content using the report button available on almost every page of the social networking site. A Facebook spokesperson told GameSpot AU that the company does not comment on individual moderations.

GameSpot AU also contacted Grow Up Australia organiser Aaron J. Percival for further comment, but has not yet received a response at time of publication.

UPDATE: On the group's official Web site, Grow Up Australia founder Aaron J. Percival has outlined more details on what the group now plans to do. "While an R18+ for computer games may be considered a controversial issue, we don't believe that any of the content provided by the administrators of the group in question could be deemed to violate the terms of use. Very rarely, an inappropriate comment would be posted by one of the members, however the administrators have always been vigilant in moderating the group and removing the inappropriate posts," the group states.

"We agree that Facebook needs to take an active role in removing groups that violate their terms of use, however we feel that they may have incorrectly reviewed our group as violating said terms. Currently, we are attempting to contact Facebook in regards to the issue, in hope to restore the group to its previous state."

UPDATE 2: It seems Facebook's initial ban has been overturned, with the original Grow Up Australia group now back up on the social networking site, including its 30,000-plus fans and content stretching back to 2009. GameSpot AU has contacted Facebook for comment on why the ban was overturned, but has not yet received a response as of press time.