Notorious UES Mommas FB group mysteriously shut down for six days: ‘Got really out of control’

It needed a timeout.

Early Friday morning, the infamous UES Mommas Facebook group – known for its exclusionary membership practices and petty parenting controversies – was suddenly shut down by parent company Meta.

The mystery cancellation immediately prompted outcry and speculation. 

“Good riddance,” Wednesday Martin, a social researcher and the author of the bestselling memoir “Primates of Park Avenue,” told The Post.

A social media post about its demise on rival Facebook group Moms of the Upper East Side (MUES) quickly drew nearly 300 comments, ranging from “OMG!” and “So horrible!” to echoes of Martin’s sentiments.

First launched in 2011, UES Mommas was initially a neighborly group where a couple thousands moms shared recommendations for pediatricians and mommy-and-me music classes.

“It was just a great resource for the things that I needed,” Kate Donnnelly, an Upper East Side mom-of-three who first joined the group in 2012 after the birth of her eldest son, told The Post.

But as the group grew to have more than 40,000 members, it became a venue for heated and political exchanges.

“Despite its protests to the contrary and its insistence that its mission was to ‘support mothers,” its very essence was about keeping ‘certain people’ and ‘certain ideas’ out,” Martin said. “Eventually their exclusionary ‘mean girl’ essence became the group’s identity.”

Donnelly, a stay-at-home-mom whose husband works for the NYPD, struggled to pinpoint a turning point but recalled tensions around topics such as police officers and a children’s book called “P is for Palestine.”

She also remembered a growing number of “shaming” posts attacking others’ parenting decisions, and, especially the behavior of strangers’ nannies on public playgrounds and the like.

“Those got really out of control,” she said. “It didn’t feel good to me.”

Wealthier members of the group could also seem quite out of touch. Donnelly noted a comment thread about how to keep a young child warm in chilly weather. She suggested layering, only to have another mom chime in with “I just buy my baby cashmere socks.”

In 2017, The Post reported that two conservative mothers in the group retained legal counsel after they were called “racist” and allegedly bullied after disputing the notion of “white privilege” and posting that the Black Lives Matter movement “serves no purpose.”

The women, who were eventually kicked out of the group, had NJ criminal defense lawyer Yifat Schnur send multiple group members cease-and desist letters deeming their conduct “libelous, tortious, wrongful and illegal.”

Three years later, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the group again erupted into contentious discussions about race. Some members called for a black mom to be added as a moderator, a move then-moderator Lindsey Plotnick Berger vehemently objected

“I have no intention of adding admins right now. I have worked my ass off to attempt to lead this group in a way that accounts for what its members want,” Plotnick Berger responded, as reported by The Post.

At the end of 2020, author Jane L. Rosen was reportedly booted from the group after a portrayal of a similar group in her novel “Eliza Starts a Rumor” was reportedly too close for comfort for group moderators.

In 2021, lawyer Tiffany Ma became one of the group’s moderators and gained a reputation for strict requirements for new members.

“She was awful,” Malee Sebag, a mother-of-two and longtime Yorkville resident, told The Post. “She upended the group.”

Ma went as far as to ask wannabe members for copies of sonograms and birth certificates. For those entering into parenthood via surrogacy or adoption, she asked for legal documents, per earlier reports.

Those very early in their journey to motherhood could also be mama-non-grata.

“We require a heartbeat to [be] let in,” Ma reportedly wrote in one exchange.

Some members defended Ma’s handling of the group.

“There is a lot of false information about Tiffany out there. I have met her. She is not a bad person,” a mother who lives on the Upper East Side and asked to remain anonymous, told The Post. “Her asks [to] join were a bit much, but she never did illegal things.”

On Wednesday morning, The Post reached out to Meta about the Facebook group being shut down.

A public affairs representative said Meta had been in error and the group was quickly restored.

However, a person close to UES Mommas administrators said the shutdown was actually related to a post Meta had flagged about illegal substances or guns, and that the issue demonstrated the need for the group to have the strict policies it’s been maligned for.

“A rigorous and secure admissions and posting policy is protective of the group,” the source said. “Further such security measures must be taken, instead of less.”