Can you believe it?! Facebook has been lying to us! Oh, the shock and horror! Cue the shocked Pikachu face!
In private, the company has built a system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules, according to company documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The program, known as “cross check” or “XCheck,” was initially intended as a quality-control measure for actions taken against high-profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and journalists. Today, it shields millions of VIP users from the company’s normal enforcement process, the documents show. Some users are “whitelisted”—rendered immune from enforcement actions—while others are allowed to post rule-violating material pending Facebook employee reviews that often never come.
You don’t say…
But do go on.
To minimize conflict with average users, the company has long kept its notifications of content removals opaque. Users often describe on Facebook, Instagram or rival platforms what they say are removal errors, often accompanied by a screenshot of the notice they receive.
Welcome to “What I’m Starting to Do 101”. I have also been encouraging Prime to do the same. Facebook can pull this “Uh, but that’s not what really happened” all they like, until you bring out the screenshots.
However, even that’s dangerous. People have been banned for posting screenshots of harassment, because somehow the victim posting that they have been harassed breaks community standards for harassment.
Facebook pays close attention. One internal presentation about the issue last year was titled “Users Retaliating Against Facebook Actions.”
They don’t pay that close attention. Period. There’s a subreddit called “Fuck Facebook”. The comments on a number of pages I follow have gone from “Cool Post” to “Why is Zuc trying to kill our group? WTF?” There are a lot of people who post similar comments: they were harassed, they were bullied, they reported the comments and nothing happened. But they told the asshole to back off and got an immediate ban. There’s a fuckload of victim blaming here and the harassers get off scot-free. There’s also been cases of people who have been threatened with the loss of their accounts because of something they posted six years ago and they can’t find that particular post in order to delete it. It’s ridiculous.
“Literally all I said was happy birthday,” one user posted in response to a botched takedown, according to the presentation.
I posted a pair of memes. Now I’m dealing with a thirty day ban.
“Apparently Facebook doesn’t allow complaining about paint colors now?” another user complained after Facebook flagged as hate speech the declaration that “white paint colors are the worst.”
Yep. You also can’t call an anti-vaxxer an “ignorant potato”. But “r*t*rd”? That’s acceptable. Except according to community standards, it’s not but hey, who’s counting?
“Users like to screenshot us at our most ridiculous,” the presentation said, noting they often are outraged even when Facebook correctly applies its rules.
Here’s the problem: they don’t. Quite literally, one of Facebook’s community standards outright states that ableist slurs are not allowed. Period. Prime had a Facebook user calling him–and other people–“r*t*rds”. Prime called the asshole out on his bigotry. Prime is serving a thirty day ban. As for the ableist piece of shit? Who knows. But probably not.
This is why everyone hates you, Zuc. You fucking suck at running your social media site. Or, maybe it runs exactly as it should; after all, you started this bullshit to rank girls on their “hotness”.
Prime has said he’s done. He’s not going back to Facebook again. Me? I’m going to do the same, but I’m going to make a friends only post and let everyone know about my blog. I’m going to tell them that I’m far more active here and that I just can’t use Facebook in good faith anymore. I’m done. I can’t support that sort of toxicity. So I’m done.
Hopefully, the place will begin to rot from the inside and collapse. Only it won’t happen fast enough for me.
Iacon East 