Facebook Community Standards
Since lockdown FIRST began, I have been spending much more time on Facebook. Mostly because I use it to communicate with friends and family as well as clients. In June, I woke up to find I had a 24 hour ban on Facebook for posting a screenshot of the words “A lot of gay white men are absolute trash”. The words themselves had been removed some time in May, despite the fact that these words were part of a conversation about gay white men molesting me at Pride and were therefore accurate. It’s funny that these words were detected by whatever “AI” Facebook uses but images that have offensive words pertaining to race, sex, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, disability status etc are unreadable…!
Since the 24 hour ban, I have had 4 more and today been given another. It’s difficult at this point to not see this as a personal vendetta. There must be some sort of “watch list” for people who have had a certain number of bans. I have seen similar stories from friends who belong to various marginalised communities.
It’s twisted that Facebook are able to cut people off from their entire support network on a whim for simply using a swear word. I had thought that the “attack on Free Speech” was a ploy from the far right but actually Free Speech does seem to be under attack when it comes from members of a marginalised community. It’s fine for people to use racial slurs, repeatedly mock and misgender trans people, even make fun of those of us with disabilities but you call someone a prick or tell them “off you fuck” and the ban-hammer comes crashing down!
I literally did not bully or harass anyone. I was trying to protect a friend who was being bullied and I’m the one who got the ban because I used a swear word!
The Oversight Board is supposed to be Facebook‘s new appeal board but I don’t hold out any hope that it will help me based on their recent post:
“Today the Oversight Board announced its first cases.
Six cases have been selected by the Board, including five appeals from Facebook and Instagram users, and one referral by Facebook.
More than 20,000 cases have been referred to the Board since October. Since we cannot hear every case, the Board has selected cases that have the potential to affect lots of users around the world, are of critical importance to public discourse or raise important questions about Facebook’s policies.
If you have expertise or perspectives that you think will help the Board with reaching a decision on any of the cases announced today, you can submit a public comment by following the links in our post below.
The Oversight Board wasn’t created to solve every problem with Facebook, but the selection of our first cases is an important step towards establishing a critical independent check on the company’s approach to content moderation and empowering users.”
6 posts out of 20,000! SIX!
This past year, Facebook has become an absolute cess pit. Something that had previously been reserved for a micro blogging site that we love to hate.
With so many physical restrictions thanks to COVID, tempers are frayed, and people are starting to have to confront their own problematic selves and their views on police brutality and racism in America. This has lead to some most unpleasant exchanges on social media.
There is a lot of the usual: people calling me a bitch, a cunt, a tramp etc, people accusing me of being a pedophile, people threatening to rape, beat and/or murder me. These things genuinely don’t bother me — you can’t ever hope to be an activist without having people be angry at you for disrupting the status quo -but one thing I am seeing an increase of that is genuinely troubling is the increase of actual videos and pictures depicting violence against women and children.
For a little while, I was in a tag group on Facebook that became so disgustingly toxic that I could no longer sit and laugh at the stupidity of the posts. This particular group has moved on from it’s original purpose and has become a dumping ground for men to share content inciting violence against women. These men are self-proclaimed MGTOW men who are absolutely not going their own way!
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One particular video I found deeply disturbing shows a young child being beaten with an item. I’m not entirely sure what the item is but it appears to be either an electrical cable or a belt. The video was shared in the Facebook group by a person attempting to highlight that women are more violent than men. Whether this fact is true or not, sharing such videos is not the way to make a point. I personally reported the video a number of times. I have had messages back telling me that Facebook couldn’t prioritise my report or that the post doesn’t go against Facebook’s Community Standards. Lets take a look at some of those Community “Standards”:
13. Violent and Graphic Content
We remove content that glorifies violence or celebrates the suffering or humiliation of others because it may create an environment that discourages participation. We allow graphic content (with some limitations) to help people raise awareness about issues. We know that people value the ability to discuss important issues like human rights abuses or acts of terrorism. We also know that people have different sensitivities with regard to graphic and violent content. For that reason, we add a warning label to especially graphic or violent content so that it is not available to people under the age of eighteen and so that people are aware of the graphic or violent nature before they click to see it.
This is Facebook’s stance on violence and graphic content. The video in question does not serve any purpose. It is a graphic depiction of harm against a child. There is no political message. There is no warning label. The caption of the video is: “This Baby Mama Terrori$t’s is abusing her child while another person films. She has been arrested.” The video is shared via a page dedicated to trashing women for claiming child support. None of this goes against Facebook’s community standards, yet talking about my experience and how I feel does.
Other things that don’t go against Facebook’s community standards:
Unsolicited genital pictures
Videos of women being assaulted
Threats of rape/violence/death
Doxxing
Racism
Ableism
Homophobia
Transphobia
Xenophobia
All of which are frequently seen on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg recently said about Facebook: “I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, then maybe it could have gone differently,” he said. “Those early years shaped my belief that giving everyone a voice empowers the powerless and pushes society to be better over time.” So, is Facebook really the last bastion of free speech? Apparently, yes. As long as your free speech doesn’t say anything negative about white men or include a fucking curse word!
