I’ve been working to raise awareness for people with Autism and their families for over a decade. I do so by sharing our story in a very open, honest and transparent way. I’ve also been providing a free support forum for families to join and seek comfort, guidance and advice from other people who’ve been there.

While the My Autism Help Forums have been down since I moved to a new server. I’ve created a new, smaller, easier to use support forum and it can be found here. It’s totally free and all you have to do is register to this blog to gain complete access. You can do that in the right side bar or the footer at the bottom of this page.

Now comes the point where I need to ask for your help.

I have been effectively shut out of using Facebook to reach my readers and connect to new ones. Similar to what happened to Lost and Tired (my original blog), there is someone who keeps reporting every post I share on my personal timeline and my fan page as spam or offensive content.

The above screenshot is just from the last day or so. This person goes back as far as they can on my timeline and reports each post as spam, getting them automatically pulled by Facebook. I then have to go through one by one, and appeal the decision for each post. Until the appeal goes through and gets approved, theautismdad.com url banned from Facebook, meaning you can’t even click the like button on a blog post or share a post you like with someone else on Facebook. When you try to share it, there will be a message stating the url has been blacklisted, as though I’ve done something wrong.

Keep in mind that I only share things on my timeline and my page. I don’t post them on anything that doesn’t belong to me.

I’ve been battling this almost every day since January 18, 2018. Thankfully, once I request that Facebook lay human eyes on the posts that have been reported, they remove the flag and restore the posts. Unfortunately, the links back to the articles on this blog are destroyed in the process.

As a result of this ongoing battle, I’ve lost a a huge chunk of my Facebook referral traffic. That means I can’t reach my readers or connect with new ones via Facebook as I historically have.

At the same time, this has crippled my ad revenue. That’s one of the main ways I provide for my family and cover the cost of the server each month. All I want to do is help people and provide for my family. That’s it. I’m not hurting anyone. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I help people all over the world.

The person responsible for this has been blocked but apparently created a new account to circumvent the block. I’ve reported this to Facebook but there’s nothing else I can do. I know who this person is and it was this same person who did this to Lost and Tired as well.

While I’m not going to call this person out directly, I wanted to explain what was going on and why I’ve been so stressed out lately. I wasn’t going to say anything about this because I didn’t want to give this person the satisfaction of knowing they are creating havoc in our lives. I’ve decided that I not going to silently battle this anymore. I work so hard to build and maintain this site. It’s not easy but it makes a difference in the lives of many Autism and Special Needs families.

I need to ask you for help. If you could please help me share my work on your favorite social media site, that would be incredibly helpful. Facebook might be hit or miss until I get this whole thing resolved, meaning you should be able to share a post on your timeline, unless the url gets temporarily blacklisted. Once I get it restored and Facebook has been really good about doing this, sharing will work again.

I just need help to offset the loss in traffic I experience, each time I have to go through this with Facebook. Every other social media site is fine and like I said, Facebook keeps undoing what this person is doing but it’s a process and it takes time. About thirty percent of my repeat traffic comes from Facebook because that’s how many of my readers learn about new posts. Does that make sense?

What I do, I do to help others. It takes a great deal of time energy and effort to do this. I’ve been blessed to be able to turn my family’s situation into a means of helping other special needs families, as well as a way of meeting some needs of my own family.

I’m not asking you to blindly share anything. I’m asking you to share anything that you find meaningful or that you think is worth sharing.

My intention is to never have to ask you for help because I want to be the one helping you. Having said that, I need your help and anything you are able to, or willing to do would be very much appreciated.

Thank you so much for your time.. ☺