UniLad Facebook page down: Mystery surrounds disappearance of account with 34 million followers

It's not clear when or whether the page will come back

Andrew Griffin
Friday 17 November 2017 13:03 GMT
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A 3D-printed Facebook like button is seen in front of the Facebook logo, in this illustration taken October 25, 2017
A 3D-printed Facebook like button is seen in front of the Facebook logo, in this illustration taken October 25, 2017 (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)

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The hugely popular UniLad Facebook page appears to have disappeared from the site.

The page – which has a huge 34 million followers and has grown rapidly – appears to be completely inaccessible. Anyone attempting to load it up will see an image of a broken "Like" button, and a message saying that "This page isn't available".

"The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed," the error page reads. It gives no information on why the page went down, and whether or when it will be coming back.

The independent media company has said that its Facebook page was the biggest in the world in 2016. That page is thought to be one of its biggest traffic drivers, and amassed millions of views on its viral videos, many of which spread quickly across the internet.

It is the biggest of a range of media companies, like LadBible, that seized on the increased reach given by Facebook and helped grow that by posting a range of viral videos and posts.

The UniLad site itself continues to work, and its presence on other social media sites like Twitter don't appear to have been affected.

UniLad is far from the first major publication whose page has been mysteriously removed.

Even the site Social Media Examiner – which concentrates on reporting on sites like Facebook – told in 2015 how its site had mysteriously disappeared. It said in the aftermath that it wasn't sure why its page had disappeared, but an article on its site said that it had been contacted by Facebook who said "it appears a back-end alert was triggered that caused your page and several others to go invisible temporarily".

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