Facebook is actively removing postings I'm making today.

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

Steve Woods

@wdlindsy In the circumstances NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ) might be a better abbreviation than Nazi.

William Lindsey :toad:

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.

#Facebook #censorship #Republicans #Trump
/7

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@wdlindsy even without this there's already a definite bias of the algorithm not just to remove political posts, but anything that is vaguely related to "bad news", I've been stopped for sharing safety messages from the local Fire Brigade (literally how to prevent fires, like the advice from Smokey Bear you have in USA) for vague reasons. I believe there is a deliberate attempt to encourage "toxic positivity" on Meta assets to keep them advertiser friendly..

William Lindsey :toad:

@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.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy it certainly could be the algorithm but that's not the right question.

Algorithms are either written by people or written by garbage llm ai that uses a human written algorithm.

I think the right question is something like "why is Facebook censoring information and PEOPLE who are not pro Trump?" And "how are they determining what to censor and for how long?".

At the end of the day humans are responsible for all of these actions or inactions. Three algorithm is just a tool.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@wdlindsy also "Truck and Trump" folk are more likely to accept adverts and marketing without question and even buy stuff from them compared to lefties, especially vehicles, consumer goods, junk food products, meat and other things progressive folk try to cut down on, so they would be viewed as a more valuable demographic/product to Meta...

William Lindsey :toad:

@wood5y I suspect you're right if historical accuracy is the goal. Most American readers would have no clue what the acronym meant, though, unfortunately.

Steve Woods

@wdlindsy Neither would Faceache's algorithm.

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

@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)

William Lindsey :toad:

@wood5y Ah, I see your point now. Sorry to be so thick-headed previously. You're exactly right!

William Lindsey :toad:

@vfrmedia That's right. And we have abundant evidence that the whole tech-bro community increasingly leans in a right-wing direction often disguised as "libertarianism."