ONLINE - On October 2nd, 2024, Tammy Cooley, owner and admin of a popular local FaceBook community group in Cheyenne, discovered her group was permanently deleted by Facebook. She created a new community group, called Cheyenne Community Connections 2.0 which you can join by clicking here. Keep reading for more information about Cheyenne Community Connections and what happened.
UPDATE 11/1/2024: The old group page is back up and functioning normally. It's not clear here at Optopolis when this took place, but Tammy C., the owner of the group, told Optopolis that she was not notified and only just now discovered the old group page is back up and going again. You may still want to join Cheyenne Community Connections 2.0 in case this happens again.
An overview of Cheyenne Community Connections
Cheyenne Community Connections is a local group run by Tammy Cooley on Facebook. She opened the original group page about twelve years ago, and it amassed over fifty thousand members. Her group has arguably provided an unprecedented amount of value over the years to so many different people in and around Cheyenne, including Optopolis.
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| A 2024-Facebook post created by Optopolis in Cheyenne Community Connections addressing a local business expanding to Cheyenne - Optopolis on Facebook |
The group is a convenient place to find out what's happening in Cheyenne, whether it's stores that are opening or closing, traffic delays due to car crashes and other traffic-related incidents, events like Fridays on the plaza and CFD, and so much more. While the new group intends to do the same, there is at least one unavoidable caveat which will be discussed further below.
The old group was deleted permanently...
Tammy posted to her Facebook page that her Facebook group was permanently deleted by Facebook on October 2nd, 2024. She found that a post had been made in the old group that most likely resulted in the deletion of her group. She couldn't see what the deleted post was and wasn't able to have the group restored.
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| Tammy Cooley's post on Facebook discussing what happened to the group - Posted by Tammy Cooley |
Facebook and other social media platforms (including YouTube in this case) have relatively strict policies when it comes to posting questionable content. While some questionable posts can and do slip through the cracks, many don't, and on sites like these, it sometimes can only take one bad post being detected to ruin something for everyone. This is a large and good reason to have moderation in groups like Cheyenne Community Connections, but even with moderators, spam detection, post reporting, and other moderation tools in use, some things can still slip by unnoticed and/or undetected.
Unfortunately, there's not really a clear-cut way to specifically know with certainty why the allegedly-infringing-post was detected, only to then be handled in such a harsh manner. SPECULATING HERE - Seeing how many (if not all) auto-moderation tools do sometimes make mistakes or misinterpret things, it's always possible that the alleged-infringing-user's-post simply contained a typo that triggered the group deletion... it's not hard to mistype, "just a second," for instance. With no way to know for sure, one could even speculate that, maybe, a hacker got into someone's account then started posting potentially harmful content. Who knows?
...but! The group has returned... for now.
On the evening of October 3rd, Landyn Medina, owner and admin of an otherwise unrelated Facebook Group called Connections (Cheyenne), posted that Tammy would be restarting Cheyenne Community Connections. At lunchtime on October 5th, Tammy officially opened up Cheyenne Community Connections 2.0.
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| This slightly updated banner is now being used in the new group. - Posted by Tammy Cooley |
Within roughly three hours of opening the new group, Cheyenne Community Connections 2.0 had already achieved over one-thousand members. Many people were already raving about the new group, one person saying, "[Ho-ray,] I'm happy we can post again," and another exclaiming, "Yay, I'm so glad you're back!"
Within a matter of about five hours from the time the group was created, the group went from zero to over two-thousand members, some likely new but many returning from the old group. The growth slowed a bit overnight to no one's surprise, but as of about 10:55 AM on October 6th, Cheyenne Community Connections 2.0 already exceeded 3.6 thousand members.
FaceBook profiles can make posts in the new connections group (in addition to joining, interacting, and other normal group activities). At this time, however, it appears FaceBook pages are limited in what they can do; pages can join the group and can react to/share posts, but the FaceBook pages typically must wait six months to post. While not ideal, a moderation tool may be necessary in this case to reduce the chance of scammers and other spam from occurring in the group.
Cheyenne Community Connections 1.0 almost became lost media.
When it was initially deleted, the original Cheyenne Community Connections group almost became a piece of lost media. For the duration it was taken down, content in the group was completely inaccessible. The new group will soon amass new information and new group members, but it will forever lack information posted in the years prior to the creation of the secondary group and won't always have new information posted there in addition to the main group.
Perhaps some of the information is less valuable than other pieces of information, but nonetheless, a plethora of information could've been offline indefinitely. Fortunately, any loss of photos and videos posted by Optopolis over the years wouldn't be a huge deal since these files are typically backed up, but who knows how many posts, photos, and videos from other people have never been properly backed up in a separate location, things that may actually have served value to others.
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| One of many posts from Cheyenne Community Connections that likely can't be found anywhere else... except for here in this article by coincidence. - Posted by Sabrina M of Industry Beauty & Barber Shop |
At least some articles here on Optopolis included embedded posts from the old Cheyenne Community Connections group as a reference, but sadly, those embedded posts from the old group will could someday become no longer be publicly viewable and, therefore, unlikely to be viewable in their embedded format. Perhaps, that is a lesson learned for Optopolis; take a screenshot of referenced posts in case an incident like this happens again and refrain from using embeds where possible.
Update 11/1: The original group is live again
Upon making a Facebook post on in Cheyenne Community Connections here at Optopolis, it was discovered by accident that the old group is live again. The owner of the group, Tammy Cooley, was never notified and was only discovering this information herself at the same time the discovery was made here at Optopolis.
It's unclear at this time what will happen with 2.0 group, though it appears likely the new group may be kept as a backup in the event the original group gets deleted again.
What do you think?
For those who were in the old group, what were your favorite parts of the old Cheyenne Community Connections? Will you join the new group? Let us know your thoughts of this situation in the comments!
Originally published 10/06/2024 at 11:05 AM
Updated 11/01/2024 at 2:09 PM to add new details about the group at the top and add clarity in the article.
Updated 06/24/2025 at 1:58 PM MT to clarify that the group was deleted by Facebook again.
Updated 06/24/2025 at 5:56 PM MT to remove notice; after approximately eight hours, the group was finally restored again. Also cleaned up visibility issues within this article. Fixed banner photo at top of page so it should'be be cut off, added screenshot of an Optopolis post from 2024. Reworded the lost media section due to shifted context of the rest of the article with previous edits.