It’s curious to see what’s happening with the East Galway Gas Plant Concern Group on Facebook – take a look when you get a few minutes.

The earliest social media posts by this group generated 50-60 likes and a comparable number of shares. This dropped radically when the group shared this post:

This posts highlighted concerns with lithium-ion batteries – proposed for a power plant near Portumna – based on events happening around the globe, including this video of a fire from Scotland.

Facebook decided, at some level (via algorithm, most likely) that the Concern Group shouldn’t be sharing this information. Directly after sharing, the group received this warning:

You’d have to ask why? The likelihood is that Facebook as a business NEED DATA CENTRES can’t allow groups to protest the fuel supply for these data centres, no matter what harms they might bring.

Data centres need power from gas and battery sources, so lithium batteries cannot be criticised or it hurts Facebook. A mad conspiracy theory? You decide.