Shadowbanned in the Saha World
This post was shared to all our Buddhagang groups, but it was only removed from one — Science and Buddhism. Probably because some MAGA-aligned members reported it as hate speech. But there was no hate speech — just a Dharma-based description of the hindrance of laziness, and how it shows up in the story of that pudgala we call Trump.
This is the story of what’s been happening in the BuddhaGang Facebook spaces. It’s personal—and it’s collective, like all personal things are. This is Prem Saga, but it’s also part of the BuddhaGang Saga.
This platform isn’t ideal. At one point, it seemed like it could more easily bear more fruit — but things change. So we adapt. That’s what bodhisattvas do.
Some time back, we were contacted by Meta — the giant corporation that runs Facebook, one of the biggest social media platforms in this samsaric world-system. They said they wanted to help us “spread Buddhism.” That was the actual subject line of the email. At first, Prem thought it was spam — but it turned out to be real.
A team of sharp, kind, and woke women of color, as far as we could tell, were managing a new outreach effort called the “Faith Partnerships Initiative.”
They liked what we were doing. They saw that our form of engaged Buddhism, rooted in real history and real dharma, was cutting through the noise. They gave us $5,000 in ad credits. They sent a film crew to Olympia. They followed me in the woods asking me about how I use the platform to do and spread Engaged Buddhism. They filmed me meditating and teaching. They recorded interviews in the apartment. It was fun.
Then the layoffs came — their whole team got wiped out. Not so long after that — maybe a year or two later — Facebook hired Dustin Carmack, a Project 2025 guy, to direct policy. That was a more open move against “wokeness” — and that’s when our page reach plummeted.
We had been getting millions of views across our pages. Engagement was high. We got hate too — but that comes with the territory when you teach actual Dharma in public, in this era. It was working.
And then it wasn’t.
I got dinged because a friend shared a link to our group. No. There was no trickery, just some stuff that the AI watcher is trained to attack.
No transparency — just a growing pile of strange “violations” of community standards. Our friend Dee was always getting hit hard by the AI watcher. Back when we had friends inside Meta, they could sometimes help get us out of Facebook jail — when we clearly hadn’t violated anything.
But now it wasn’t just Dee. It was happening to our pages too.
And when we appealed — nothing.
Or worse: a few times Prem spoke to actual human reps from Meta support. They agreed — no violation. But before they hit the button to release us from jail, they had to go check with someone higher up.
Each time they came back with a new story, but they all revolved around the theme of “I can’t help you.”
We know what that means — they were told not to help.
Maybe someone didn’t like our content.
Maybe the system didn’t know what to make of us.
Either way — things shifted. And they weren’t just shifting in our little Buddhagang realm — they were shifting everywhere.
MAGA nonsense went full blast during election season.
The anti-wokeness vibe infected maaaaany so-called Buddhists — even those who once claimed to care about engagement, justice, compassion.
It was a multidimensional bummer.
We began to notice strange patterns —
We could post a video on a different app, where we had almost no followers, and it would get way more reach than a post in our group of over 200,000 members on this platform.
Even core friends said they weren’t seeing our posts anymore.
Notifications got strange. Messages got buried.
Prem was unable to respond to comments for a long time.
No notification of any violation — just rejection.
And that’s where so much of the teaching unfolds — in the back and forth, in the comments.
Prem writes long, detailed responses for the sake of beings.
People say it’s too political — but he explains. Prem always explains.
The watchers noticed that, too.
So they began to just “randomly” not allow Prem to comment.
And the page insights showed it clearly:
We were being silenced on purpose.
Reach went from millions to barely tens of thousands — almost overnight.
That’s called censorship.
We didn’t break their rules. But they keep dinging us anyway. Sometimes with wild justifications.
This one was completely ridiculous. I shared it from a type 1 diabetes support group—I’m type 1 myself, and I’ve been given this kind of bad advice before, so I know exactly why the image is important. It doesn’t promote suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders. It promotes awareness — of how not to harm someone with type 1. But they flagged it anyway, and they’ve used this as one of the excuses to mute me for about a year now.
In one example, Prem shared a meme he found in a Type 1 diabetes support group. It was about blood sugar. Kermit the Frog was poking an electric socket. The caption said that telling someone with low blood sugar to take insulin is like that: a deadly misunderstanding. Important. True. The post was still up in the original group. But when I reshared it, they hit Prem with a violation. And there’s the image up above.
The images we’re sharing in this post are examples of their reasoning. They dinged us for things like “promoting regulated goods” when we said nothing of the sort. They’ve used the phrase “we avoid recommending content that makes it harder to create a safe community” while silencing content about Buddhist mindfulness of death. One video about a mouse who died and the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh on “no birth, no death” was flagged under that vague umbrella.
They say they want to prevent depictions of violence — but what we shared was love. Prem cared for a mouse. It died. Prem reflected. That’s Buddhist practice. That’s what mindfulness of death looks like in this world. But if we can’t speak of death, we can’t teach Buddhism. If they keep hitting us with warnings for this, they are pushing us out.
And that’s the pattern. Not always the sharp blade, but a continual slow squeeze mixed in with some sharp jabs here and there. Page reach plummets. Then our profiles were attacked. Friends stop seeing posts. Then your voice vanishes, but the account is still technically alive. It’s shadowbanning with plausible deniability.
They’ve been attacking all our spaces — spaces they once supported. Strange, but not surprising. This is how it goes in realms like this, dominated by prthagjana beings acting like this.
We’re adapting. We still share what we can over there on Fascismbook. Most of our friends are still here. That matters. But we’re spreading out. Prem is on TikTok now—look for @buddhagang.bodhisattva. We have this new website, Buddhagang.org, where you can read, watch, and connect more freely. There is a lot of work to do here, but friends who care to keep connected and updated can make an account here. Then, if FB ever gives us the boot, we can still be friends.
We’re not stopping. This is the Saha Realm. The Realm of Endurance. The world system of suffering, where beings fall into akusala—greed, hatred, and delusion. That’s what this whole thing runs on. So of course the systems don’t favor a message like ours. Of course they suppress the Dharma.
But the Dharma still spreads. The good news still echoes.
And for a time, they helped us. That contradiction is part of the story too. For a little while, they helped spread wokeness. They supported what they didn’t fully understand. But then came the backlash. The anti-woke rollout. Phase by phase. The layoffs. The change in policies. The rise of voices that hate what we teach.
But we still teach. We still love. The vow is still alive as this flow of good karma on that less than ideal social media platform.
So let this be part of the story—Prem Saga, BuddhaGang Saga. The fire of the Dharma keeps burning. Even if they shut off every spotlight, we still glow from within. That’s the nature of this path. It shines through the collections of merit built on all that good karma streaming out from the Bodhisattva’s vow—the vow to cultivate all the roots of goodness. Like Samantabhadra Bodhisattva Mahasattva.
We’re walking that same path. We can be called Bodhisattvas too. We just have a lot of work to do before we can say we’re like those great Mahasattvas—the ones people reference in mainstream Buddhist discourse. But the light is real. It shines from care. From the inside out, and the outside in. Because other beings are shining too—like Bodhisattvas do—and we are lit by them.
Each of us carries a unique light to shine. The more of us that shine, the more clearly tathatā is illuminated. And with more understanding, there will be less harmful karma—less suffering.
So we strive on. Especially when things aren’t okay or easy. To do otherwise would be spiritual bypassing—and that’s the opposite of Engaged Buddhism.
May this post help you understand what happened, what’s happening, and why we keep going.
