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Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Facebook Ban (Guess I'll See You Tomorrow)

I caught a 24 hour Facebook ban for this. 

Apparently FB algorithm bots just crawl for keywords and don't actually know the difference between saying something and saying someone said something. Which seems like an absolutely critical failure on all possible levels if you're leaving your censoring to bots. 

Anyway, 95% of my blog visibility is through FB, so there's really no point trying to get the article up that I had planned if I'm not going to be able to post up when I'm done.

It'll be up tomorrow, and if I need to, I'll wrap the thing I had planned for TOMORROW around to the weekend or slap it up on Thursday even though that's my day off.

In the meantime, I'll work on my taxes, take the rest of the day to finish this post instead of trying to bang it out in the next hour (hur hur "bang it out"), make something for lunch that doesn't come in a cardboard box, and maybe even take a nap. 


22 comments:

  1. If it's any conciliation, I once got a 24 hour ban because a group of people were arguing over common core math on my page.

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  2. I'm starting to see a lot of people who were very pro-Facebook censorship in the past become victims of Facebook's policies. To be sure, many of them are no longer fans of this type of mass censorship.

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    1. This feels very "how do YOU like it" and I wonder if it's coming from a place of understanding the difference between the two examples being offered up.

      If by "pro-Facebook censorship" you're talking about a platform taking a stand against hate speech, hate groups, and anti-science positions that USE them to proliferate the worst sorts of ideas, I'm still for that, and frankly FB's got some pretty milquetoast reactions to literal nazis and various flavors of supremacists. I'm just not sure they should be farming the final decisions out to bots that drop bans just for keywords without regards to context.

      Those are separate issues.

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    2. I'm still for facebook "censorship," especially in the way I imagine you mean it.

      I'm just in favor of facebook doing a better job of it, that's all.

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    3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    4. The problem with both of these comments is exactly what happened here. Facebook gets to decide what gets censored and what doesn't. Which is their right; they are a private company last I checked. But many of us have been pointing out that FB likes to censor stuff that doesn't pass muster as hate speech. And clearly they aren't doing a good job. Twitter, another serial abuser of censorship, just proved that the censorship is broken. They will ban people for life for making racist comments on the right, but call Senator Tim Scott a racial epithet and it will trend there. So yeah, I kind of find it amusing when people who are pro-social media censorship get hit with their own medicine. Giving these entities more power in our lives is all fun in games till they come after you, and eventually they always do.

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    5. I sort of figured that’s where you were going. You’re probably not gonna find much sympathy here, and I’m not even particularly interested in giving you an argument. Not only does this comment demonstrate a breathtaking lack of knowledge as to what the algorithm actually censors, a demonstrable ignorance of how anti-hate speech groups have struggled against censoring those things which aren’t hate speech, and a laughable misunderstanding that bot crawling will effect a comment like this in a way that has literally nothing to do with “our own medicine,” but more basically, it is very much worth reading up on things like The Paradox of Tolerance” and the history of fascism versus intelligentsia pieces to come up with a position a bit more sophisticated than “all censorship is always bad.”

      And on a personal note, you might want to read the studies about why folks tend to come to the defense of certain groups and think others are getting what they “deserve” and sort of point and laugh. I don’t know you well enough to say if this describes you, but in most cases what they’ve discovered is there something there that people don’t talk about it parties, so it might not be the look you want.

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  3. I was banned for quoting a joke under a humorous post. The FB censorship is insane.

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    1. I wasn't banned, but one of my comments was deleted. I was quoting from a movie the OP was talking about and had posted a screen cap, and the quote was in line with what the OP referenced from another bit of dialogue.

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  4. "Free speech" meaning the government can't censor you. Doesn't apply to mom government entities. However recent societal norms seems to be anyone can sensor anybody. Your page, your house, your property, you get to manage it. Does that apply to Facebook's property? What if you came to my bakery and wanted me to make a cake that offends you? Same concept.

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    1. I don't know who you are directing this too, but saying that businesses get to be bigots if they want to because they're not the government is pretty reductive dismissal of what was a rather complicated situation in the case of the example you alluded to.

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  5. "anyone can sensor anybody"
    That's an overstatement. Some people, and some groups, have more resources than others. If I work for a chain store, the owners can fire me if they don't like what I post on social media; I don't have reciprocal options (other than quitting).

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  6. The main problem is that Facebook is run by Bots, because they don't want to spend money on real people who would actually be able to read and understand a comment, whereas media companies are employing costly humans to deal with content. What should happen is that it is made more costly for FB to keep the bots than to hire people. That is a job for lawyers.

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  7. I once had the comment, "I like traveling by train too!" removed for 'violating our community standards on spam'

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  8. I once got a ban for saying "tang is not just a hangover cure, it's a drink for the working man". I found it funny more than anything, but I can understand how it must be frustrating tonsome people.

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  9. I have had a few bans for absurd things and am currently on a 30 day ban for saying the person who invented roundabouts should be shot in the face. For the record, the French architect Eugene Henard, who invented roundabouts, died in 1923. The American businessman who helped bring them to the United States, William Phelps Eno, died in 1945. I am being punished for being facetious and hyperbolic.

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  10. I reported a literal request for a murder that was attached to a picture. I mean they offered money to murder someone and got an auto response that the picture was not against their guidelines. There're very few people looking at anything.

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    1. Even today reported a fake account that does nothing but link to a sex site... nope... nobody looking

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  11. My account has a warning status for a year bc I commented on someone else's post that child abuse makes me angry...

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  12. Truth. Get 90 day bans for posting actual verifiable truth. Post an outright lie about the current president, no fact checkers, no threat to have post removed, no suspension. What was the outright lie? The current 2021 president has cured AIDS, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stupidity, winning awards for them all. It's not about not knowing algorithm, it's about knowing that certain platforms are completely censoring everyone from their freedom of speech.

    Oh, for the record, the one that was a verified fact was simply stating how Ronald Reagan was an actor before he ran for presidency .... I do not believe that justifies a 90 day suspension.

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  13. I shared an article of Writers Write of New Zealand "How to kill a character - a 5-point plan." BAM! Violation ticket issued.

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