Reynolds loses control of CLEAR’s Facebook page

CLEAR Facebook Page ‘Hacked’ – Peter Reynolds blames ‘Trolls & Liars’ (Where have we heard this before?)

Author: Ellen Harrison

So, Friday was Peter Reynolds’ birthday, and it would appear that some ‘hacker’ had a special birthday present in mind for him. He awoke to find that he was no longer moderator of the CLEAR Facebook page, and indeed neither were any of the rest of his cronies. The page had been taken over, with a range of semi-pornographic images and general irrelevant and misogynistic crap. 

Now, for those readers who think that Reynolds might have been hitting the value-range whisky a little harder than usual and forgot what page he was logged into when he posted the sort of half-naked lady photos he normally reserves for his personal Facebook page, we at PRW thought that initially, too. However, it soon became apparent that this was not just Peter getting drunk and sleazing on unsuspecting women as usual.

Peter and his ever dwindling gaggle of sycophants were quick to accuse everyone who ever held a grudge against Peter of hacking the page – and, let’s be fair, that’s a fucking long list. An array of random members of the UKCSC community and NORML UK members, both collectively and individually, have been accused of perpetrating this ‘crime’, with Peter going so far as to announce to some of them that he had already reported them to the police for hacking his precious Facebook page. Now, where have we heard that before? Peter, on the phone to the local plod, to grass up cannabis activists? Isn’t this starting to feel a bit ‘Groundhog Day’?

So, whodunnit? Who’s responsible for the ‘hacking’ of the page? Who could possibly have a grudge against Mr Reynolds? The list of activists he has reported to the police, abused, threatened, taken to court and generally pissed off is, let’s face it, fucking enormous. If you want a list of people with motive, we could be here all week. So, PRW has been out there, putting the ‘allegations’ to some of the folks Peter and his cronies have accused.

First on the list is Bee at West Mids CSC, as Reynolds accused her outright of hacking the site, and posted that he had ‘reported her to the police’ as such.

She stated: “A recent post by Reynolds suggested he was disappointed with Facebook’s customer service following the takeover of the CLEAR page. I interacted on his post, politely reminding him that his own customer service wasn’t exactly top notch. I was then met with a vicious private message from him, stating “I’ve reported you to the police as a suspect of hacking the clear FB page & for malicious communications & harassment”, along with “you and your sort are scum”. As an anti-prohibition activist, my time is spent promoting the positivity surrounding cannabis, not ‘hacking’ Facebook. If I had access to the CLEAR page, the only action I would’ve taken would be to save everyone a load of bullshit and just delete the page. Peter Reynolds does not represent medicinal cannabis users, he is a deceitful lying bully and represents only himself.”

Next on the list, London CSC’s own Orson Boon. Here’s what he had to say: “This isn’t the first time Peter Reynolds has claimed that I’ve been involved in hacking his site. As always these are just ridiculous unfounded claims from a person with zero credibility.”

Finally, we caught up with businessman Chris Bovey  – as someone who is owed a lot of money by Reynolds after his well-publicised and disastrous attempt to extort money out of Chris in court for libel, he is certainly high on the list of people with motive to give him a birthday to remember. He had this to say on the matter:

“It’s not the first time I’ve been wrongfully accused of computer hacking by Mr Reynolds, last time he even reported me to the police, who subsequently found no truth in his allegations.

“The idea I’ve somehow hacked the Facebook servers to gain control of his page is utterly ridiculous, however, ever since Reynolds lost that defamation lawsuit against me and was ordered by the courts to pay my five figure legal bill, there have been quite a few defamatory comments published online by Reynolds aimed at me.

“The guy is a joke and best ignored; if it were not for the fact he is a penniless loser, I might consider suing him, but in all honestly I don’t think I can say my reputation has been damaged from the rantings of that loony, since nobody takes him seriously.”

So, if none of Reynolds’ most notable detractors is involved in this, who did? The answer is far simpler than CLEAR would have you believe. For a start, have you ever heard of anyone hacking the Facebook servers? You’d have to be the greatest hacker alive. Far more likely is a much more mundane explanation:

The buffoon has probably just left one of his dodgy fake Facebook like sellers as an admin, and they’ve booted everyone from the inside and taken control for their own commercial purposes. That’s what happens when you do deals with scammers – they scam you, funny old thing. It’s been common knowledge for a long time that Reynolds has been bolstering the CLEAR Facebook page likes with literally thousands of paid-for fake clicks, and now, the scammers who sell these ‘services’ have grabbed the page for click-traffic.

This is why there’s no evidence for hacking the page – because the page hasn’t been hacked. This is why Facebook haven’t done anything. They’ve taken one look at the ever litigious-sounding complaints from Reynolds and pissed themselves laughing. No-one has hacked CLEAR. If anyone in the UKCSC community or NORML UK was that good at cracking, they’d have done it to his dumbass blog years ago, if they could be arsed, which is unlikely – face it, what could you put up there more inflammatory than what he puts there himself?

What makes me laugh most of all is how Reynolds’s gaggle of resident arse-lickers have ignored the actual facts in favour of pointing fingers at other organisations. Think about it, if one of the dozens of activists that Peter Reynolds has slandered, abused, taken to court or otherwise pissed off in the last few years had gone to the considerable effort and employed the incredible hacking skills required to hack a Facebook page, don’t you think they’d have capitalised on it after going to all that effort? Besides, looking around the web, it appears that several other group pages outside the UK with no connection to either CLEAR or NORML UK have fallen prey to the exact same ‘hacker’, which makes the CLEAR allegation of someone with a personal axe to grind all the more incredulous.

CLEAR and Reynolds appear to have learned a very expensive life-lesson about not buying fake Facebook likes from scammers, and the dozens of activists grassed up to the police, sued, harassed, slandered and generally abused by Reynolds have had a good chuckle. As activist Stu Wyatt, a long-term disabled cannabis campaigner and frequent target for Reynolds’ abuse summed up, “I think my schadenfreude gland just exploded.”