Cheyenne Community Connections was deleted, returns

Facebook logos added to the old Cheyenne Community Connections banner for context.

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.

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, which you can join here. Keep reading for more information about Cheyenne Community Connections and what happened.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 is now, in part, lost media.

Unfortunately, now, people can no longer access the original group. While a new group has been created in its place and will soon amass new information and new members, there is a huge chunk of media that is now missing from the internet. It may be possible to find small grains of information from the old group, but much of the information provided over the last twelve years is likely lost forever, or at the very least, it isn't easily accessible to people.

Perhaps some of the information was less valuable than other pieces of information, but nonetheless, a plethora of information will no longer be easily available for viewing. Fortunately, the loss of photos and videos posted by Optopolis over the years won't be a huge deal since these files are typically backed up, but who knows how many posts, photos, and videos from other people were never backed up in a separate location, things that may actually have served value to others.

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 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.

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. If and when more information comes available, this article will be updated.

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.