The Stuff that Facebook removed
A collection of memes and comments that - in their wisdom - Facebook removed and in most cases, imposed a ban. The aggressive memes seem to be left alone. I could really have never predicted these ones except for possibly one.
Cut him out!!
Wow - that is defined by Facebook as incitement of hatred or violence. These natural language processing algorithms need a shitload more work. I think this graphic explains it all!
The comment was made in a group under the full image from the left. The comment has to have been auto-detected because it was removed 2 minutes after I made it.
Chatting about this to a friend, and he was posting on his mate's profile and something like three of them went out to lunch last weekend but one guy paid. The other two were chatting about divvying up the bill and one said to the other "I'll fix him up next weekend". THAT came down and got a 15 day ban for the poor bloke who was going to pay his mate next weekend.
So here are the screen dumps for the progress:
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Moronically! |
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Yeah, right... |
Now because I know the admin of the group pretty well, I thought I'd take advantage of the "Let Others Decide" option and messaged him. He got the message a couple of hours later and disagreed with the decision. Now am I right in assuming we BOTH can disagree with the decision? IE if his objection doesn't work, then maybe I can have a go myself??? As they say, just because you read it on Facebook doesn't mean it's true. And, apparently just because you read it FROM Facebook doesn't mean it's true either.
NO WAY did *I* disagree with the decision, the group admin did.
And the appeal clearly did nothing. They'll use it to improve FUTURE decisions, but in the meantime, I'm now on yet another Facebook ban and there is NO WAY I violated Community 'Standards'.
So I used the "Something's Wrong" bug report to give them this bit of a spray:
Natural Language Processing, which I remember doing a seminar on in 1981 as part of a computer symposium, concluded even then that when there are pronouns and references it was all too much.
EG "He saw his father up the road and he was tired" - Which one was tired? The father or the original subject??
I got a 30 day ban for making a comment about an image and referring to making a transparent PNG image from a photo by saying
"I think I'll cut him out and repair his left side"
So on that basis, if you tell someone about your brother who's been a dick and you'd like your parents to "cut him out of the will", that'd get you a ban.
This is just plain wrong. You need to back off the threshold on your NLPs until you do another six months work on them. The 30 day ban costs me money by not allowing me to post at my business pages.
And it it costs Facebook money by (a) not being able to boost a post and (b) feeling so pissed off I'll never give Facebook any money for advertising ever again.
It's your own financial throat you're cutting.
Facebook has removed my whole 13 year old Profile!
It's a bit unclear what's happened. Facebook has "disabled" my profile on 21 February 2022, at about 9:00pm Sydney Time (AEDST). That's what it said, euphemistically, "disabled".
I first got a log-out type notification where I was forced to log back into Facebook, then bingo - my account had been disabled. I could appeal, and they wanted a copy of ID, so I sent my Driver's Licence.
I also got an email:
Naturally this was linking me to the appeals process I saw when I'd logged in. Naturally, I disagreed with the decision. This is bad news - my Facebook profile is thirteen years old. I have over a thousand friends, many of who have genuine contacts (IE I've met them) and trying to remember that many is going to be a nightmare.
Within fifteen minutes an email was back saying bad luck they've reviewed the decision, and my profile was GONE. That's it. No-one can view anything from my profile, and I cannot use it.
Didn't seem to be much of an appeals process - and what's worse - I HAVE NO SPECIFIC IDEA WHY THIS HAS HAPPENED.
I strongly suspect it's from sharing too much. But who knows for sure? The night before the account was disabled I had one of those "slow down" and "we've stopped this function because you're using it too quickly" type notifications when I was sharing stuff from the OTT page.
We're forced into sharing posts from Pages into Groups because Facebook reduced the Newsfeed Priority of pages in order to encourage pages - frequently set up by large multinational head offices - to pay money to boost posts from their page so more people see it.
As an amateur online political activist who incurs expenses from my online work rather than make any income (definitely true) - then I'll be buggered if I'm going to spend 60c per page impression to get a post out there.
Five years ago a really decent meme from a page like ours would hit 50,000 screens no worries. The 100k reach post was a monthly thing. Now, a post is lucky to go to a thousand screens, and we have 16-1/2 thousand likers/followers. (Pretty much the same number of likes as follows).
So facebook has created the situation where page posts need to be shared, but when you actually do so (and I'll share a page post to maybe ten groups to keep the maths easy) they come down HARD on you with no specific warning, and very little implicit warning.
I remember having problems getting reported for over-sharing during the Same Sex marriage Debate, and on two occasions then I got two 30 day bans from posting into "groups which I didn't manage".
Anyway within about 12 hours of the over-sharing warning - the account is "disabled".
IE: Gone. Verboten. Finito.
And no further appeal. Sheesh. Harsh. No wonder their user base has ceased growing and other platforms are gaining members all the time.
Facebook profits from third party user-generated content. I produce bucketloads of it. And this is the way Facebook treats me? This came totally out of the blue, and the number of suspects who've reported me is too large to really be able to guess who it was. Like all these things, I'll find out exactly what did happen in a year or two.
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| Here's what's happened, in summary |
By the way, I'm nothing like that sort of person, but for sure someone having their thirteen year old profile deleted from Facebook will end up topping themselves over it. Or hey - it's the USA - they may well go on a shooting rampage though the FB HQ at 1 Hacker Way!
Decades-old nickname is Hate Speech?
I kicked off an Alumni group for Budgewoi Public school, and only eight days after it existed I'm seeing a post removed from a user as being "Hate Speech". This is referring to a guy called Neil O'Brien, who - due to the first few letters of his name got called Nobby or Nobs. Frequently. For decades.
This is how defective Facebook's natural language processing algorithms are:
Righto Facebook. This is definitely not hate speech. I disagree with this decision fundamentally, and what's more I know I'm right. I have personal experience of the issue, and this is in no way "hate speech".
In less than ten minutes, Facebook came back with the response to my objection. Indicating clearly that it was handled by computer algorithms and not a human (which they've indicated would be delayed because of COVID).
Fucking crazy, And the photo's just disappeared. I'd like to see it!
A throwaway line gets me 30 days
A two word comment - "Dumb Americans" added to a post in a group seemed to be auto-detected as Hate Speech, and the ban was in place about 20 minutes after I made the comment. Sheesh!
A Pun on alcohol = promoting alcohol!
Just a bit of fun. Nah, seriously, just a bit of fun, and in no way promoting alcohol given by Facebook as the reason for its removal.. Removed and a seven day ban.
Restricted goods and services
Alcohol/tobacco
Do not post content that:
Attempts to buy, sell or trade alcohol or tobacco, except when:
• Posted by a Page, group or Instagram profile representing legitimate brick-and-mortar entities, including retail businesses, websites or brands, or a private individual sharing content on behalf of legitimate brick-and-mortar entities.
• Content refers to alcohol/tobacco that will be exchanged or consumed on location at an event, restaurant, bar, party and so on.
• Attempts to donate or gift alcohol or tobacco except when posted by a Page, group or Instagram profile representing legitimate brick-and-mortar entities, including retail businesses, websites or brands, or a private individual sharing content on behalf of legitimate brick-and-mortar entities.
• Asks for alcohol or tobacco
So what's gotten that meme is that $ sign in the post. HOWEVER, reading on:
"In certain cases, we will allow content that may otherwise violate the Community Standards when it is determined that the content is satirical. Content will only be allowed if the violating elements of the content are being satirised or attributed to something or someone else in order to mock or criticise them."
Which is exactly what this meme is. So they can't even interpret their own rules properly. All as a result of NOT having humans read the posts.
Went in a bit strong, I guess
03 Sep 2021. The text was the problem, not the image. Post removed and a three day ban.
Here's a list of the anti-vaxxers who have ben putting people's lives at risk by discouraging them from getting vaccinated &/or putting people's lives at rixk by objecting to the (albeit insufficient) lockdown measures imposed under the health regulations.
They have been banned at this page
You have blood on your hands. I hope you feel proud of yourselves.
(List of over thirty banned users at the page)
Here's an in progress screenshot:
Strangely enough, once I got the notification that the post had been removed, I used the "Disagree with this decision" option, and the post came back! The notification there was "we removed your ban" and the post re-appeared. Then - in the face of further rampant reporting from the anti-vaxxers - the post came down again. So (1) it violated Community Standards, then (2) it didn't violate Community Standards and (3) it did violate Community Standards again. "Community" being a synonym Facebook uses for the word "Arbitrary" no doubt.
A friendy warning becomes an infraction!
I was trying to make users aware of the sort of comment that gets pulled down in groups, and my SCREENSHOT of it got removed and led me to an immediate one day ban.
All done automatically, the post was down in seconds. Facebook can - and does - OCR memes with easy fonts.
Group Admins forced to approve all posts
If a few group members get comments removed (due to often bait-and-report switch techniques used in the comments to 'play' the Facebook algorithms) then Facebook imposes automatic "approve all posts" for the group - something that in some groups, I really don't have enough time to do. In the Facebook group "Saving New South Wales (NSW)" it went on for three months. They said the "approve all posts" would end on a certain date up to a month hence, but when we'd reach that date it'd be extended by yet another month.
The cartoon taken as 'bullying'
17 Dec 2020 and posted thus: Did you hear the "final observations" on 'Insiders' on Sunday? On the final episode of the year, and the final "final observation" Niki Savva revealed how her information was that due to COVID Arthur Sinodinos might return to Australia and be replaced by Senator Marise Payne.
Removed as Harassment and Bullying. 24 Hour ban.
Removed as Harassment and Bullying. 24 Hour ban.
The Penis that wasn't
This one was sent up in late January 2021. It went to over 5,000 users then just disappeared. I never received a notification, but the post just disappeared. I sent it up again, and exactly the same thing happened a second time.
On 1 Feb 2021, I figured it out, smoothed over the belly button and that post remains. Never seemed to have punitive action taken by Facebook about this before.
The Benefits of "Disagree with Decision"
You always should disagree with a decision to remove one of your posts because it sometimes works. Here's a meme posted at One Term Tories, that was shared to the Save New South Wales page. Note, the reporting happened at Save NSW where some of the readership is downright contrary to the page's purpose. This is because many years ago (2013) I put up a video of cops with sniffer dogs at Sydney's Central Rail, and it went to about three million screens, including a number of disgruntled police officers who then proceeded to completely violate the NSW cops' social media use policy and troll the post hoping I'd remove it.
I did think strongly about removing it, bur by the time I'd come back to do it, the thing had gone to half a million screens, so there's no way that was ever coming down.
We got about 2,000 page likes in a week, and more follows. In fact Save NSW is a rare page where the followers exceed the likes! It's normally the other ay around. Show the page you support its cause (like it) but "don't flood my newsfeed with crap posts" - so they don't follow it. We've got a lot of watchers just ready to pounce on stuff and report it down.
They got their way for a week with the shared post:
So naturally I disagreed with the decision of Facebook to remove it. I can't see what's wrong with this at all. They are caricatures, and not Nazi personalities. Besides Mr Godwin doesn't work for Facebook, does he?
Anyway, a WHOLE WEEK LATER, the post (share on the other page, that is) was restored. This seems to show that then (late 2019) there were actually humans doing the second double-check. I don't think that's the case at all now - it's all in the lap of the code-writers.
A "test" message is spam?
I was having trouble sharing posts in july 2017, during the height of the Same Sex Marriage plebiscite which was held with a cut-off date of 21 September 2017. This was also about the time we LOST the Group 1,000,00 Strong Against Andrew Bolt, too, I remember. So posting a "test" into the group firstly seemed reasonable. When it worked, I was going to delete it, but I never got the chance. However, good to see an appeal worked.
Just ignore the context
In December 2014, this meme went up with the description "[NSW] ICAC has them in their sights". So it was reported extensively, and Facebook's algorithms agreed with the trolls' claims that it was inciting violence or death. 30 day ban.
But wait - there's more. As I go back through the old memes, I'll add them to this post
A Password Hack
Mar 10, 2019 11:07:07pm
Just had to go through a Facebook security check to log back in. Seems like someone's had an unsuccessful go at guessing my password. No access was gained, because if you can guess my password, you're a very inspired person.
Don't like the fact FB made me CHANGE the password - as something that has withstood a real bashing (particularly from late 2014 to early 2015) proved what a great password it was. Anyway, I've done a total rethink now, and hopefully I can remember what the new one is :-)
SO: Has anyone else had other people trying to login to it and not getting the password right?
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