I have All Of The Thoughts about the dynamics of those Facebook groups, but there’s two things happening here.
First, Facebook’s basic guide for running a group is to avoid any type of conflict or argument, or anything that would naturally bring this to the forefront - it fuels behavior, and as the group grew it made moderation far more challenging. The fact COVID came along so quickly meant that the admins saw first hand how easily things could spiral, and defaulted to the notion that any type of discourse that could fuel disagreement is beyond the scope of “information.” Which is how you get a topic that is clearly informative (“Hey, prices are actually 5% higher, don’t be shocked when you see your receipt and check your credit card statements”) censored because they know criticizing the park fuels flame wars that they believe distract from the community they’re trying to build.
However, that’s an argument for cutting off conversation but making a conscious effort to inform on your own, like say in your daily posts informing people about basic park information. But the fact THAT didn’t happen is a reminder about the second thing happening: park employees not willing to be seen as undermining the park, and admins who were always going to hold the park’s water but are especially willing to do so when they‘re getting media day invites. The former is why current employees shouldn’t put themselves in administrator roles within unofficial communities. The latter is why these groups are inherently designed to fail the basic test of true independence.
