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Thursday, May 6, 2021

When will Facebook's Oversight Board review Facebook's ban on this blog?

Recently, Facebook has been all in the news becauses its much trumpeted "Oversight Board" came down with a "ruling" that Facebook's ban of Donald Trump from its platforms, Facebook and Instagram, were justified, but that Facebook was wrong to make the term of the ban indefinite.

Well, this blog has been banned from Facebook for many months now, and it was done without notice, explanation, or recourse.

Sometime last year readers noticed that attempts to post links to any of the Linux Beach blog posts, specifically the URL https://claysbeach.blogspot.com, to Facebook, got this response:
Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.
They don't even tell me if the "other people on Facebook" that have found my posts "abusive" are Trump supporters, Putin supporters, or fans of Bashar al-Assad. I suppose you could add the US Green Party, Democracy Now, and assorted other members of  what I call the white Left to that list. Curious minds want to know. 

Attempts to contact Facebook and rectify the problem have been met with a stone wall.  I received no response after I posted this to their Problem Form:
Can't post url https://claysbeach.blogspot.com/ and don't know why. If there is an issue with content. I would like to know what it is and be given a chance to change it, or challenge that decision.
More recently, I can see they have upped their game. Now, when you try to post this blog to Facebook the popup claims that the URL is being denied because of "SPAM."
That first panel is now followed by a series of panels titled "How we make decisions", "Our Community Standards", and allows you to register an objection, but still no recourse, no way to ask why a whole blog is banned for life, and not a particular post. Not even a way to ask how it went from being banned for "abusive content" to being banned for "spam."
While I may suspect that their real objection to my blog has more to do with its pro-socialist and anti-racist politics than any so-called "abusive content" or "spam", it may have just inadvertently gotten caught up in whatever mindless automation they have setup to patrol their site. In any case, Facebook gives us no way to challenge, or even question, their decisions. This is far too much power for a billionaire to have over what has become, in spite of private ownership, an important public thoroughfare. 

I raise this problem because I suspect I'm not the only small voice being silenced by Facebook with such methods, and while much media fanfare is being made about the attention Facebook is giving to its decision to ban the former guy, it is carrying forward a program that largely silences progressive voices on its platforms.

Clay Claiborne

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