Matt was given no reason as to why he and his wife's accounts and the pages were deleted. Nor was he given an opportunity to query the decision, as when he attempted to raise the issue with Facebook he was told his case was already closed.

Only weeks before Liberal Mountain and the other pages were deleted, the couple had verified their identifies with Facebook; a process which is typically considered sufficient to regain control of disabled accounts.

They also went through the more rigorous approvals process for running political ads, put in place by Facebook after accusations of foreign interference in the 2016 US presidential election which saw Donald Trump come to power.

I watched other pages, mesmerised, as they continually posted spam and clickbait; and they are still up on Facebook while I'm gone.

Matt Mountain

The purge of political content comes as Facebook fends off calls for greater government regulation if it fails to curb efforts by some groups to engage in clandestine propaganda campaigns designed to influence public opinion.

Liberal Mountain's removal followed the removal of several pages Infowars pages run by controversial right-wing commentator Alex Jones.

Infowars' removal came after repeated warnings, with Facebook eventually bowing to public pressure after initially declining to remove some of the offending content.

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"When it comes to someone like Alex Jones, it took hate speech, bullying and multiple warnings by Facebook before he was banned," Matt says.

"Jones had a combined 2.5 million followers on Facebook. We had a combined 2 million followers, yet we received no warnings and were apparently banned without hesitation, even though we'd never bullied or harassed innocent people."

Facebook's refusal to reveal to Matt why his accounts and pages were removed echos the heavy-handed tactics used to punish high-profile pages "F--- it: Let's have a beer" and "Mommy Needs Vodka" earlier this year.

Soon after deleting Liberal Mountain, Facebook announced a crackdown on "inauthentic activity" which stepped up its purge of political pages. The crackdown has claimed more than 500 pages and 250 accounts from across the political spectrum.

The social media site has introduced a policy banning "coordinated inauthentic behaviour" where networks of accounts or pages work together to "mislead others about who they are, and what they are doing," wrote Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher.

The policy has been enacted against pages, groups and accounts "created to stir up political debate," he says, including in the US, Middle East, Russia and the UK.

"Topics like natural disasters or celebrity gossip have been popular ways to generate clickbait. But today, these networks increasingly use sensational political content — regardless of its political slant — to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site," Gleicher wrote.

"And like the politically motivated activity we’ve seen, the “news” stories or opinions these accounts and Pages share are often indistinguishable from legitimate political debate.

"They often use their fake accounts to generate fake likes and shares. This artificially inflates engagement for their inauthentic Pages and the posts they share, misleading people about their popularity and improving their ranking in News Feed. This activity goes against what people expect on Facebook, and it violates our policies against spam."

While Matt denies publishing spam or linking to spam websites, he does admit to controlling multiple Facebook accounts. It is a common practice amongst owners of popular pages, who create "backup" accounts so they can still access their page should Facebook block or ban their primary account without warning.

"This is one of the most heartbreaking experiences I've ever been through. My wife cries every day about it and I don't know what I can do," Matt says. "This wasn't some fun side project for me, it was everything and I wasn't going to do anything that I thought would upset Facebook and risk losing it all.

"I tried being better than everyone else by not spamming, not posting paid links, and not posting risky content. I watched other pages, mesmerised, as they continually posted spam and clickbait; and they are still up on Facebook while I'm gone."

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While Facebook refuses to discuss the matter directly with Matt, a spokesperson told Fairfax Media that Liberal Mountain was treated the same as any other page and was warned before it was removed for several violations including linking to "misleading information".

“Our systems detected a set of pages with administrators who were using fake accounts and violating our spam policies. We’ve reviewed and removed the account and Pages associated with this activity,” the spokesperson says, declining to discuss why Matt was not told this directly and has no avenue to dispute the decision.

Meanwhile, Matt is pleading with Facebook to return his pages and his authentic Facebook account, and also to be more transparent and consistent when it comes to applying policies, to help innocent page owners trying to abide by the rules.

"When Facebook is so inconsistent it really looks like wiping out our pages and accounts was a knee-jerk reaction after Infowars was taken down, done to create a sense of balance to appease conservative commentators who accuse Facebook of being biased against the right," Matt says.

"It's hard to say when Facebook finds you guilty and tears down everything you've built without even telling you what you did wrong, or letting you defend yourself."