Following in the footsteps of the main site, Pirate Bay's Facebook page with nearly half a million likes was shut down a few hours ago. It's unclear whether the Pirate Bay crew deleted the page or if Facebook took action against the troubled site.

More than a week has passed since The Pirate Bay’s servers were pulled offline, and now the same is happening to the site’s official Facebook page.

With more than 470,000 likes TPB’s Facebook page had quite a reach, although the last status update dates back to last year. Since then the page was mostly used by ‘fans’ to share TPB related news stories, and most recently links to Pirate Bay alternatives.

Those who try to access the page today are out of luck though, as Facebook informs them that “the page isn’t available” and that it “may have been removed.”

It’s unclear what the reason behind the removal is. It could have been initiated by The Pirate Bay crew itself but it’s also possible that Facebook was asked to shut it down for alleged links to copyright infringing material.

If The Pirate Bay crew deleted the page the motivation may have been to cover its tracks. Swedish authorities have confirmed that there’s a new criminal investigation ongoing into the site’s operators, which may have prompted some to cut their ties.

That said, TPB’s official Twitter profile, which hasn’t been updated since December last year, remains online.

The Pirate Bay crew have remained pretty much silent over the past few days. Earlier this week a message was relayed through “Mr 10100100000” who suggested that no decision has yet been made on a potential return.

“Will we reboot? We don’t know yet. But if and when we do, it’ll be with a bang,” Mr 10100100000 said.

Meanwhile, most of the site’s users are flocking to the Pirate Bay copies that are floating around, or one of the other popular torrent sites. This mass migration caused trouble at ExtraTorrent yesterday, who were briefly offline due to a “sudden increase in user traffic.”

At the same time, groups using the “Anonymous” moniker claimed to have hacked both the Swedish Government and the New Zealand police in a retaliatory move, while a better known “Anonymous” group distanced itself from The Pirate Bay.

“We do not support the return of The Pirate Bay itself. We used to be the activist arm behind this website and what it stood for, but we feel like The Pirate Bay doesn’t represent our message anymore,” the latter group said.

And so the storm continues.