Popular gossip publisher Shade Room is back -- for now -- after Facebook ban

The Shade Room, the gossip/pop culture publisher with a huge following on Facebook, is back on Facebook, two days after Facebook gave it the boot.

For now, at least.

The Shade Room’s original Facebook page, which had 4.4 million fans before the social network shut it down on Monday, is still gone. But founder and CEO Angelica Nwandu put up a new one this afternoon at facebook.com/shaderoominc.

Here’s the first post:

The back-and-forth is worth noting because the Shade Room is the best-known example of a publisher that has grown up almost entirely on social media platforms — first on Facebook’s Instagram, and now on Facebook and other social networks as well.

It’s an appealing idea for many digital media publishers, but this week’s news underscores the risk of setting up shop on someone else’s turf.

“It is a wake-up call, and it makes us go even harder to find and get a grip on our audience,” Nwandu said. “At the end of the day, you don’t want to have a company that’s dependent on Facebook.”

Facebook rep Alexa Cassanos says the company took down Nwandu’s Facebook page (its Instagram account remained untouched) because of copyright violations. Facebook had warned The Shade Room “multiple times” after hearing from intellectual property owners, Cassanos said.

Nwandu, who started The Shade Room two years ago and has run it on a shoestring since, acknowledges that she has run into copyright issues before, and has “restructured the company” to prevent new ones. But she says Facebook didn’t cite copyright violations when it took the page down this week; instead it referenced “hateful, threatening or obscene” content.

Here’s a screenshot of the note Nwandu says she received from Facebook:

Nwandu says she can’t figure out what content Facebook is referencing; I’ve asked Facebook reps for additional comment.

The Shade Room is primarily geared toward a black audience, but has quickly gained attention from a broad swath of pop culture. Celebrities like Khloe Kardashian will drop into the comments section of the publisher’s posts to engage with its audience.

Nwandu says she would like to build the company into a brand that works on multiple platforms, including television. So far she’s raised a small angel round, but says she’s resistant to taking on additional investors, since the company is already generating a profit from the ads it sells.

“I have a lot of people who want to invest. At the moment I don’t want to take money,” she said. “The Shade Room is making money. Who’s to say that I can’t bootstrap all the way to the top? I’m only going to take money if I have to.”

Here’s a conversation I had with Nwandu and Matt Bellassai, a video star who launched on BuzzFeed, at the Code/Media conference in February:

https://youtu.be/yKaYGIfOgHo

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. We can’t do that if we have a paywall.

That’s why we also turn to you, our readers, to help us keep Vox free. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via