Facebook erroneously restricted my account with no appeal

[andrewducker]

Earlier today, Facebook restricted my account.


This is the reason they gave:


What you're seeing there is a standard example of what I do when I repost my daily links poston Facebook - some kind of preamble list/quote (in this case it's a list of Quidditch teams) and then a list of the tags from the post.

Obviously, this either contains neither nudity nor sexual activity. And, looking at the link it has in it that doesn't have nudity or sexual activity either.

Now, the restriction notice actually says that *multiple posts* didn't follow their standards. But the last time this happened I filed an appeal, successfully:


So they seem to be taking into account previous *successfully appealed* posts, where they admit they got it wrong!

And this time around there seems to be no way to appeal.

Three things occur to me:
1) Either someone is maliciously accusing me of having sexual posts/nudity and they aren't checking before marking a post that way - leaving me open to malicious accusations or their automated filter is really rubbish and nobody is checking what it spits out before they ban people.
2) Not having an appeal process is ridiculous.
3) Taking into account previously successfully appealed posts is, if anything, even more ridiculous.

If anyone knows anyone at Facebook they can point at this, I'd love to get it sorted out. Not just for me, but for anyone else who is caught up in this kafkaesque situation.

Comments

[strange_complex]

Ugh, sorry to hear this. It's utterly unfair, and all the more so because it's clearly the result of over-cautious algorithms with no recourse to human judgement (but nonetheless reflecting human biases).

I'm guessing it's the presence of words like 'lgbt' and 'transgender' in your list that have triggered this response, perhaps particularly because they occur in the same post as 'bigotry' and / or 'children'. It's a problem LGBT+ people have been flagging up for a good twenty years, but here we are.

[dreema]

adding in hp/jkr in the same sentence as those will probably have got someone all frothy at the mouth as well.

[altamira16]

I bet it is TERFs.

[mtbc]

I have nothing useful to offer beyond being happy to be alongside you in spirit should you wish to rage at them but, goodness, good luck with getting any competent attention drawn to it.

[dewline]

Speaking of other people caught up in similar situations:

Ian Gould, whom I worked with on Local Hero, seems to also be getting targeted maliciously on a regular basis.

Jon "Saskboy" Klein - he of the saskboy_feed account - is in a weird situation: he has a Facebook account as well as the blog I just mentioned, but if anyone tries to post a link directly to anything on that blog over on Facebook, even if in a friends-locked posting in their own account, it's auto-blocked from posting. They have "sensors" to detect attempted links in friends-locked postings not meant for the wider Facebook public. I know this from first-hand experience. I don't know who has it in for Jon or why.

This is not comfortable.

[radiantfracture]

(reads the comments)

God the Internet is a mess

[darkoshi]

What was the "02 Dec 2021" post which it shows as no longer available*? Even without counting the appealed one, the 02 Dec one and the 18 Dec would make it two posts which could be considered multiple. But I agree with all your points, and am glad I don't use Facebook much as having that happen to me would be very frustrating and angering.

*Wait, was it the 02 Dec links post which included "Crows are really fucking smart"? If it got removed because of the word "fucking", then their algorithms really are bad.

Based on this page:
https://transparency.fb.com/policies/community-standards/adult-nudity-sexual-activity/

it only disallows sexual images and audio, not text. Your links posts contain neither, right?
Based on the "Proactive Content" graph at the bottom of the page, "Of the violating content we actioned for adult nudity and sexual activity, how much did we find before people reported it?", the great majority was flagged by Facebook, not other users. So if their algorithms are flagging content that doesn't even have images or audio...

or I wonder if they don't allow posts to link to sexual content either, and they make assumptions about links based on their text??

If you look at the "Appealed Content" and "Restored Content" graphs, it looks like most of the appealed items end up being restored.
I wonder if they'll let you appeal the decision after the 19 hours are over.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I don't remember what it was, but it was almost certainly a link post.

[reverancepavane]

"...ohforfuckssake..."

Is the only thing I can think of.

[cmcmck]

I'd guess at terf mischief making.

Why am I not surprised?

[zz]

the punishment for false censorship (or creating a system that does it for you) should be something suitably biblical, like losing a hand or your tongue.

[cellio]

Ridiculous and, sadly, not surprising. Meaningful human evaluation costs money, and they don't really seem to care how many innocent people they malign or punish as they set their algorithms loose to make decisions like this.

Their platform their rules, and they don't have to treat people fairly or decently, as we've all learned there and elsewhere, but still super-frustrating! It's one of the reasons I'm not interested in using Facebook, though I do still use Twitter at risk of this shit happening. We really need to find better ways, ones with distributed authority. :-(

[andrewducker]

Unfortunately many of my friends moved there and no longer post anywhere else.