Letters From Facebook Jail: Day 3

On Tuesday morning I was alerted by Facebook that I had posted something that violated community standards and as a result I would be banned from posting on Facebook for thirty days. The offending post was of Christmas tree decorations from Nazi Germany where the face of Adolph Hitler and a Swastika took the place of the more standard Christmas themes. I certainly wasn't making a statement in support of Nazi ideology or hate. Quite the opposite, I was pointing out how religion can be and often is coopted by politics.

They offered me the opportunity to appeal my ban, which I of course immediately did, because I had certainly not done anything hurtful or offensive.

I arrived home from work to discover that I was again able to post and like on Facebook, so I assumed that my appeal had caused someone at Facebook to realize I had done nothing hateful or harmful. Then, an hour later, I was told my appeal was denied and my Facebook ban was still in effect.

This morning, Thanksgiving Day, I scrolled through Facebook to see what people were saying, and without thinking about it, liked a comment. I was surprised to see that instead of a notice reminding me that I was banned, the like registered. Which encouraged me to try to post on my Facebook wall to see if it would be permitted. It was.

A short while later the ban was again in effect, but at least I had the opportunity to wish my Facebook friends a Happy Thanksgiving.

It is not my desire to bore you with the details about how Facebook institutes bans. And God knows I am not whining about the way I am being treated when there are others being placed in real prisons, facing real solitary confinement for sharing truthful information. I just want to point out to you the sort of one-sided relationship between powerful media sites and the average citizen. Imagine if George Orwell and Franz Kafka had a baby.

When I was told I had violated community standards, I was at least told what the offensive post was. Many people are not even told that and have had to guess what they did wrong. And while I was told I had an opportunity to appeal the ban, I was not given the chance to defend myself in any way. And when I received a reply back from my appeal, I was simply told that my offense against community standards had been upheld. No mention of who reviewed it, what the community standards are, or why the initial decision to ban me from one of modern civilization's greatest communication platforms.

Let me quickly point out the misuse of the term "community standards". It sounds almost democratic, doesn't it? As if the community of users got together, or at least sent their most trusted Facebook page administrators to a meeting where the rights and protection of the Facebook community was discussed and voted upon. Facebook does in fact have a set of community standards available: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/ But while they make the argument that the group is chosen from "civil society organizations, activist groups, and thought leaders, in such areas as digital and civil rights, anti-discrimination, free speech, and human rights..." no specific organizations or people are mentioned.

If Facebook is to be an aid to a democratic society, and I believe it is necessary that it should be, it must behave in an open fashion. It can be argued that as a corporation, Facebook can act in any way it chooses, but my interest is not in the rights of corporations but in the rights of human beings and the well-being of society. It is therefore dangerous to a society that deems itself democratic to allow one of its primary conduits of conversation to be run in a secretive and self-serving fashion. The rights of corporations should hold little import in comparison with the rights of citizens of the United States and indeed the whole world. If the laws say differently, the laws need to be changed. 

I can imagine a much more democratic way of dealing with people who appeal a ban for violating non-specific standards. Appealing to a jury of one's piers is an idea that our founding fathers found essential. Assuredly it would involve a little more effort than appeal requests being handled by algorithms, but I'm certain it could be arranged without undue burden on the corporation that is Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg would have to peel a bunch of hundreds of his stack of cash, but I'm willing to bet it would still stand higher than the Eiffel Tower. He has, after all, had an amazing return on investment to date, and it is not unreasonable to ask him to invest a little more to ensure his product is a beneficial tool for society. I think it would do him good to view Facebook as a boon to humanity rather than a tool with which to extract wealth. There has to be a soul down inside him somewhere.

The alternative, of course, is what we have now and what will only become worse in the future: a dystopian surveillance tool that decides in secret what can and cannot be posted. A world where humans communicate through a platform that decides who will see that communication and what barriers they will have to overcome to access it. A platform for conversation, perhaps the most influential one we have, that leaves a user constantly self-censoring for fear that they might be transgressing unspecified laws and banned from communication with loved ones, coworkers, fans, potential customers, people with similar interests, etc. It is really hard to imagine a world more dystopian than one where you have no idea what words, images, or combinations of words and images can leave you isolated from your community. There is no more frustrating a feeling than working with all your passion and beliefs into crafting a statement or article, knowing that your post might be being strangled without any way of knowing if it is or not.

The typical response to the concerns I have expressed will surely be brought up. "You’re free not to use it if you don’t like it." "If you don’t like it, build your own communication platform." "Facebook is a private corporation that can run their business anyway they see fit." Etc. The problem with these sorts of responses that are always trotted out in defense of the big and the powerful is that such arguments never do anything to change things for the better and in fact permit things to get continually worse. People are constantly losing their power and their voice, while corporations are becoming less and less interested in serving the public good. How much longer do we want to continue to have the conversation take place within the framework giant corporations have constructed? If Facebook is permitted to continue running its platform as a money-making venture with no concern for their influence on our society, I fear there will be no end to it in the foreseeable future.

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