Facebook is actively removing postings I'm making today.

William Lindsey :toad:

@callisto Yes, I thought perhaps that was the trigger. And that, of course, inevitably favors all those who want to suppress discussion of how race determines so many of our choices. And that inevitably favors one of the two parties — so that FB censorship is far from honest and even-handed.

Radio Jammor

@wdlindsy @Swalsh I posted a headline and a link from a UK based newsite, which was an opinion piece about activism, which was clearly their article, and it got pulled-up for being "misleading", along with another historical post. I have appealed them both as this is a clear nonsense (they could have pulled many more on the same basis, but none are actually misleading), so it looks like the AI pulled out a recent one for some reason and an older one for the same reason as justification.

William Lindsey :toad:

@AlliFlowers Please let me know. I'd be curious. In the 2016 election cycle, any time I posted anything with the phrase "white evangelicals," Facebook yanked it. People told me this was "just" the algorithm at work, but I think there's inbuilt censorship that also targets certain people's accounts if others have complained and reported to try to shut them down.

Dr. Flowers

@wdlindsy I posted the image with only “FYI” as the text above.

William Lindsey :toad:

@AlliFlowers Please let me know if FB takes it down. I posted it with no comment at all — only the image.

William Lindsey :toad:

@radiojammor @Swalsh I've had Facebook yank postings immediately when I posted an excerpt by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and also by Christa Brown. Ben-Ghiat was reporting on her blog that lots of others were telling her FB was taking down postings linking to her. In the case of Christa Brown, I think it's her discussion of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist church that caused the reaction — yet FB never pulls down postings I made about the sexual abuse situation in the Catholic church.

Radio Jammor

@wdlindsy @Swalsh I do not know who those people are, I am not in your country and I have posted nothing along those lines. What you are indicating may be only part of what is going on.

Dr. Flowers

@wdlindsy I definitely will.

Coldoug

@wdlindsy

It wouldn't but none of that justifies belief in the invisible man.

William Lindsey :toad:

@beingreal I would think myself to be extremely arrogant to inform others that what they claim is visible to them but is not visible to me is non-existent. I wonder what might give me the right to make that claim about things like hope, imagination, love, all sorts of things that might be very visible to someone else while not visible to me. I find dogmatism not only off-putting but downright repulsive, whether it emanates from religion or anti-religious groups.

William Lindsey :toad:

@AlliFlowers Thank you!

William Lindsey :toad:

@radiojammor @Swalsh Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a well-known commentator on authoritarianism. Her book Strongmen is an outstanding study of authoritarianism. Christa Brown recently published a book Baptistland about her struggle to deal with the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention — including her own abuse by a pastor when she was a teen.

Humble Fan of Atty. Woo

@wdlindsy @AlliFlowers

you're not wrong. I posted a comical sign taken from an American Indian group off of Threads, and FB took it down twice. Here's what it said:
(Indian Face on top) INDIAN PARKING ONLY. ALL OTHERS NEED A RESERVATION

I loved it and shared it for my followers in My Stories. Twice they took it down, but so far it has survived when I shared it to my FB page and typed: This is comedy. Don't take it down.

Coldoug

@wdlindsy

So you're not dogmatic about your views of one Donald Trump.

I too am repulsed by people who make statements about dogma while being dogmatic.
See, it's very easy to be flippant.

William Lindsey :toad:

@BillMcGuire @AlliFlowers Unfortunately, I had no choice: Facebook itself took that posting down and immediately removed another one of mine yesterday, informing me after that that I have various penalties leveled against my account until November 19. Interesting, isn't it, that that time frame silences me until two weeks after the election? I've never had this happen before with my Facebook account. People say it's "just" the algorithm, but more is at work here than that.

William Lindsey :toad:

@beingreal You're perfectly free to be a dogmatic, insensitive, arrogant militant anti-religionist if you choose to be.

But please don't cherish the illusion that you are doing anything other than mirroring the dogmatic, insensitive, arrogant militancy of the very religion you claim to find problematic.

As for me, I'll keep finding dogmatism of all stripes and flavors repulsive. Life's too short and energy's too limited for snarky ripping away at people we claim to value as allies.

William Lindsey :toad:

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.

#Facebook #censorship #Republicans #Trump
/4

William Lindsey :toad:

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.

#Facebook #censorship #Republicans #Trump
/5

William Lindsey :toad:

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.

#Facebook #censorship #Republicans #Trump
/6

William Lindsey :toad:

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.

#Facebook #censorship #Republicans #Trump
/7