Facebook is actively removing postings I'm making today. I maintain a foothold on Facebook, knowing its tawdriness and that it's no friend to progressive politics, because I oversee a family history-DNA project that's housed there. And Facebook is one way I can keep in quick touch with a wide circle of relatives and friends.
First posting removed today: Jess Piper's graphic (below) about white women voting in this election.
Second posting Facebook took down immediately: this excerpt from A.R. Moxon today —
"Nazism is on the ballot this year, and people who consider themselves Nazis know it, even if so many of the rest of us seem not to want to. So it came to pass that Nazis came to the pro-Trump boat show in Jupiter Florida last week."
I understand that the word Nazi is an algorithm-triggering red flag, and the photo Moxon uses with MAGA folks flying Nazi flags is another one.
But it's perfectly obvious that Moxon is not promoting Nazis, but doing the opposite. So censoring any critical mention of Nazism to refer to Trump is pro-Republican censorship.
And when another posting with no such red flags is yanked immediately the same day, something more's going on here.
I've just posted the following on my Facebook page and we'lll see what happens:
Yesterday, Facebook immediately took down two of my postings right after I made them, then levying penalties against my account I've never had, which limit my ability to use my account until after November 19 — an interesting choice of dates when the two postings were related to the coming election on November 5.
A clear silencing of me up to the post-election period….
One of the postings was a graphic that Jess Piper had posted on Substack.
After the postings were removed, I shared information about this on my Mastodon page. A follower there told me she would post the same Jess Piper graphic on her Facebook feed and see what happened.
She did so. Facebook did not take it down.
People keep saying that "the algorithm," as if it's some mystical force acting in independence of human tinkering and will, takes down postings on Facebook.
If that's the case, then I'd like some explanation for why, when I posted that graphic, it was immediately taken down with a warning to me, but when she posted it, nothing happened.
Obviously something more is at work as Facebook censors some people than "the algorithm."
One dynamic, I suspect, is that if people watching your account for hostile reasons flag it and report it repeatedly to Facebook, often acting in concert with others, Facebook then puts censorship mechanisms in place for your account. These often have overt political intent.
In the lead-up to the 2016 election, I began to find that any time I posted anything with the words "white evangelical(s)" in it, Facebook took the posting down.
Meanwhile, I see on an ongoing basis all sorts of obvious right-wing disinformation being circulated freely on Facebook, with no attempt that I can see made by Facebook to censor that disinformation.
More than "just the algorithm" is at work in Facebook censorship.
@vfrmedia "I believe there is a deliberate attempt to encourage 'toxic positivity' on Meta assets to keep them advertiser friendly."
That's a very good point. I agreee. Facebook has never taken down a nice photo I make of my garden or neighborhood or a meal I've cooked.
And even when they do not take down my politically motivated postings, I know that they use some shadow-banning system to keep them from being widely seen.
@wdlindsy even without shadow banning the feed is engineered to prioritise such things as cat videos sponsored by pet food companies rather than my own friends DJ sets (which I often end up missing because their post only appears days later). I don't even have a cat at home!
(I have befriended some neighbours cats, but I certainly don't feed them as I don't want to entice them away from their families)
@wdlindsy something else I just realised as I was driving to work is that Meta in UK generally allows all sorts of animal rights related content uncensored, even activism such as hunt saboteurs (in UK hunting with dogs in illegal but folk in rural areas still try it).
Again, this is likely due to potential ad revenue - those who are kind to animals tend to both have pets and share food with other creatures such as foxes, badgers as well as feeding wild birds, so more sales opportunities..
> tech-bro community [...] disguised as "libertarianism"
Yeah, see my recent blog essay Political Terraforming for additional thoughts on that.
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2024/10/political-terraforming.html
Tha is, because Zucherburg, like all other biljonairs, support MAGA and Trump
@wdlindsy @Luuk_Aalders And Substack literally pays Nazis.
https://www.theverge.com/24040685/substack-newsletters-nazi-content-moderation-policy
Near the end of my use of Facebook in 2018, I had an eerie feeling that if I posted depressing things, nobody would ever see them.
Based on that, I started a thread with a kitten image, "We luv kittehs!"
Then a flower image, "flowers is so pritty!"
Then a picture of a cup of coffee, "Best way to start day!"
Getting lots of Likes and "Ha ha!" responses from my Friends.
But in last image, under coffee cup was coaster with scrawled words,
"Novichok was a NATO Article 5 attack."
Interesting.
Some months back, I recall hearing about Meta experimenting with fake participants in their online groups.
One incident reported had a mom who was not a real person. But was relating a pretend parenting experience.
Trying to understand an online property, we make dubious models in our heads and use poor analogies.
"Twitter is a town square"
When I was on Facebook I was constantly picking up bans simply for calling someone who was clearly an idiot ‘an idiot’. Even got banned for using the same phrase but in a foreign language (French, Spanish, Portuguese)
There were also bans for using ‘English’ words that offend the sensibilities of stupid fucking septics.
‘Septic’ is from the rhyming slang ‘septic tank’ = Yank (American)
Three possible causes, none mutually exclusive...
1) An illiterate AI picture recognizer saw the swastikas, and presumed the worst thereafter. FB surely doesn't have the labor budget to review very many of these.
2) Perhaps contemporary crypto-nazis are exploiting these defective post-flagging algorithms, spitefully steering them in the opposite direction of their designers intent.
3) Malice, or virtual malice by way of greed-driven reckless negligence, on FB's part.
"..., and presumed the worst thereafter."
That is, FB's AI spots the swastikas, then being quite oblivious to journalistic intent assumes the user is going to post bad pictures every time, and therefore automatically trashes any graphics from the supposed offender.
@wdlindsy OTOH, I posted this on my county Democratic Party's FB page five days ago and it's still up. I'm guessing it's the phrase "white women" that got your first post TOS'd - FB is well known for TOS'ing any mention of whiteness.
(What prompted the post was a call from a male lifelong Republican who was afraid of retaliation if he votes for Democrats but Trump wins the election.)
William Lindsey 
Wade42
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
Kent Pitman
Luuk_Aalders
mathew
Medea Vanamonde🏳️⚧️ ♀
GunChleoc
Muro deGrizeco
Snigdha
𝓓 𝓑 𝓒𝓸𝓸𝓹𝓮𝓻
AIienated
lolonurse
Cookiefiend
Callisto