I thought I made it pretty clear what was going on in my blog posts about my Facebook woes (here’s post one and post two for reference) but apparently I didn’t because a bunch of commenters have gotten the wrong impression. In fact I’ve had to delete some comments and block one guy from commenting altogether because he kept ranting, and I need to set the record straight:
The problems that have led to me being placed in Facebook jail have nothing to do with the Charley Project, or anything I have posted about missing persons. Nobody in particular is angry at me for any particular reason. No one is conspiring against me, particularly not any child traffickers or organized groups of pedophiles or anyone in government.
I have no idea why anybody got the idea that any of the above things were happening, but they are not. If you believed this, let me make it perfectly clear: you are mistaken.
My complaints about Facebook are entirely about their AI moderation being terrible and their customer service being nonexistent. I am being treated THE SAME AS EVERYBODY ELSE that uses Facebook, and THIS IS THE PROBLEM. Anyone who uses Facebook is liable to get into this kind of predicament, and unless the platform makes changes, that’s how it’s going to stay.
I do not intend to join any other platforms that have marketed themselves as alternatives to Facebook. Hopefully, in February, AI moderation will let me out of Facebook jail. Unless something else happens in the meantime, that’s all I have to say in the matter.
The Charley Project Blog 
I found an article on Forbes about moderation mistakes. It’s from last June:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/09/300000-facebook-content-moderation-mistakes-daily-report-says/?sh=2c42b62a54d0
I hope they let you out of “Facebook jail” by February. Maybe the lady you emailed will reply back before then. I hope so. 🙂
AI moderation sucks. I got a violation because of a meme I posted showing a landscape painting that said “Did you like this painting? Congratulations, you liked a painting by Adolf Hitler!” AI decided it was pro-Nazi simply cause it had Hitler’s name in it!
When I used to be on Facebook I got suspended for a meme that was pro-resistance AGAINST Nazis.
Yeah, that’s happened to me too.
That’s unreal. I think ai moderation has a long, long way to go before it’s trustworthy to make moderating decisions, from the looks of things. 🙂
This is my first post about Facebook on here. I mention that only to avoid being mixed up with anyone else’s opinions. I haven’t yet read all comments on the threads you mention, certainly not the more recent one anyway, and I’m not sure what those may say.
But… isn’t it true that you are, in all effect, being censored? And isn’t it true that it happened as a direct result of using Hitler’s name in a way that apparently invited doubt as to whether you somehow viewed him in a favorable way?
Meaghan, I respect your honesty. Do you really disagree that it’s censorship?
I don’t disagree that it’s censorship, but some people are somehow getting the impression that I am being targeted by Facebook for some reason. I am not. And some people were going on about the First Amendment; this isn’t a First Amendment issue. I deleted other comments that were suggesting conspiracies against me because I find that idea ridiculous.
There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years about Facebook and other Big Tech platforms having particular political or social agendas and censoring those users that don’t follow them. To begin with I don’t think that’s true; the only thing Facebook wants is to make money for itself.
In any case, a platform has the right to moderate content and remove that which violates their terms of service, those terms to be decided by the platform. In this case Facebook is trying to keep racist and pro-Nazi content off its platform, which is their right and which, in my opinion, is their moral obligation. My problem is that nothing I’ve posted violates their TOS and their AI moderation is so terrible it can’t tell the difference between a meme that’s educating people about history or making a joke about a historical event, and one that is promoting Naziism.
Agreed, it wouldn’t make sense to think you were targeted, as the presence of Charley Project could only add much-needed credibility to a site like Facebook. And apparently it’s concern for their credibility that’s driving all this.
But I can’t believe that their slippery slope was created unintentionally.
Sarcasm — such as offering congratulations relating to a Hitler painting, as you did — isn’t new. It’s been a regularly used part of social communication, and seemingly forever. So the idea that it was overlooked in their design, doesn’t add up. It simply must be true that it was known beforehand, that countless wrongful suspensions and bannings were due to occur.
And for what gain, exactly? Nothing.
Facebook is aware that they have a serious problem with moderation mistakes. It’s just that right now they are kind of overwhelmed. In September they decided to crack down super hard (mainly because of all the covid denial happening on the platform, which was literally killing people), but they don’t really have the tools (better AI, more human moderators) to make proper judgments. The result is that a LOT of people have had their accounts wrongfully restricted like I have.
Facebook doesn’t seem to care much, however. I think they’d rather be seen as doing too much than too little.
I swear, it’d be so interesting to study all of these cases to see exactly what’s behind each one.
Right away, I can imagine that sarcasm must play a big role in many of the outcomes. That issue alone raises serious questions as to whether a restriction was truly a mistake or if it’s just as Facebook would have it.
Anyway, yes. A very interesting topic.
Another issue is that Facebook can, and does, decide that something you posted YEARS ago that’s been up all this time is now suddenly objectionable. That meme with the painting by Adolf Hitler? I posted that in 2018. They didn’t decide to Zuck me for it until two years later.
(And no, no one who has it in for me and was going through my history reporting everything and reported the meme and got it Zucked. I considered that, but think it’s not possible. I posted the same meme in two different groups and it got removed by Facebook at the exact same time, two years later. That’s a bot.)
This is just unreal. That means your posting history — which could only lead to a single realistic conclusion about the issue in question: that it was innocent sarcasm, at worst — wasn’t even taken into consideration.
I can’t help but wonder, now more than ever, if this would be considered by Facebook to be a mistake or whether they’d view it as something else.
You were clear. Crystal clear. I think some ppl just have an emotional response to anything, “fb”. Because fb is an unfriendly entity that does not care about it’s customers. I’ve had a horrible experience with them, which is due to their total lack of quality customer service. Shrug. As for the conspiracy theorists, well, the pandemic has taught me that behind seemingly normal personas, lurks rabid conspiracy theorists. Ugh. Stay well.
I agree with Tracy, you were very clear. Perhaps some folks were commenting when they hadn’t actually read your full posts.
I have to say I am VERY glad I missed the replies here with ridiculous conspiracy theories. It was those people who drove me off FB because they were invading every page, group & forum with off topic craziness.
I checked your blog just now to see if you had written anything lately because I was concerned that you hadn’t posted to Facebook in over a month. So I just now saw this entry. Anyway, it stinks that you had to deal with a bunch of jerks in the comments section. As the bumper sticker says, mean people suck.
Miss you on FB! Hopefully they will free you soon!! ❤️❤️❤️