Facebook Users can now Appeal Freedom of Speech... to Facebook [2x down again]

Steve Kinney admin at pilobilus.net
Thu Sep 19 08:37:20 PDT 2019



On 9/19/19 2:24 AM, grarpamp wrote:
> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/facebook-plans-launch-of-its-own-supreme-court-for-handling-takedown-appeals/
> https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/letter-from-mark-zuckerberg-on-oversight-board-charter.pdf
> https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/oversight_board_charter.pdf
> 
> Notice how the "users" column in Ars article has only one
> "right" and function "granted" to them by FB...: "beg and plead"
> 
> Just like how you can "petition" your "government" or some
> supposedly "independant" branch of its tax paid slaves therein,
> for a "redress of grievances", such as say... taxation,
> or police brutality, or zoning, or ... anything,
> even right to freedom from their arbitrary rule over you.

It appears to me that The Facebook recently modified its content
censorship policy for 'hate speech' and 'offensive speech.'

Formerly, someone who wanted to shut another user the fuck up would
report their posts as TOS violations, and someone - probably a
contractor with very limited English literacy - would glance at the
reported post and click a 'ban button.'  First offense, three days
locked out of posting.  Second offense within a given window of time,
seven days locked out.  Third offense within a given window, indefinite
suspension and/or account termination.

But as of a week or 10 days ago, the 'ban button' seems to produce a
different result:  A new error message replaces the reported post, which
I would guess still looks normal to the user who made the post.  I have
reasonable confidence that the new error message indicates a censored
post, because so far the users whose posts I have seen replaced by the
error message have a consistent history of posting stuff that skates
right up to the edge of Facebook TOS violation; so far I have not seen
an exception.

Simple explanation:  Users banned from posting largely abandon The
Facebook during their bans, and so generate little or no ad revenue or
(direct) surveillance data in those time frames.  Presenting false error
messages permits a lower threshold of censorship, without increasing
controversy over censorship itself or reducing The Facebook's per-user
revenues.

So far I can only speculate.  But now that I have posted this, I should
remember to ASK the original posters about the content of "error message
posts." Oddly enough, these posts often have one or two visible replies
(not referencing the error message) which would enable affected users to
identify the posts in question - once informed that their posted content
/has/ silently vanished.






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