I posted this on Facebook this morning.
“[There’s] all kinds of social media criticism this morning of so-called mainstream media covering the Iowa caucus last night, but I disagree. It was a good reminder that Americans can be … just ignorant.”
Originally I’d typed “that Americans can be just horrible and stupid” and immediately got a message from Facebook saying I might get in trouble for that comment. So I changed it to ignorant. Was it the stupid or the horrible that got the attention?
I don’t know.
And it survived, that post. Still, it’s tame compared to the truly horrible stuff my brother has said with virtually no penalty. And it was pretty harsh compared to something I’d posted three or so months ago that got me thrown into Facebook Jail. (My first time!)
Let me tell you that story. My sin was that I posted a link to a story, which goes like this:
In June, the city council of Murfreesboro enacted an ordinance outlawing “indecent exposure, public indecency, lewd behavior, nudity or sexual conduct”. The rule did not explicitly mention homosexuality, but LGBTQ+ people in the town quickly realized that the ordinance references 21-72 of the city code, which categorizes homosexuality as an act of indecent sexual conduct.
The ordinance was essentially a covert ban on LGBTQ+ existence. …
Earlier this month [Nov.], following a legal challenge from the ACLU of Tennessee, the government of Murfreesboro removed “homosexuality” from the list of acts defined as “public indecency” by the city code. The small victory came after officials repeatedly refused to issue permits for the BoroPride Festival, citing the new ordinance.
To introduce the link, I did not use the quote above. Instead, I said the Murfreesboro GOP government had passed an ordinance that allowed two people in local government to decide what is publicly obscene. (I left out names.) I also said it looked like these two men were trying to outlaw a way of being that includes several of my friends. I did not say gay, I did not say homosexual. I did say that this law was “a bit ridiculous here in the 21st century.”
That’s all.
I also did not say that the stupid, stupid Republican Murfreesboro government had to pay half a million dollars to settle with the BoroPride Festival.
And yet I was thrown in Facebook Jail. Here’s what really confuses me: Facebook said I’d violated their cybersecurity rules. They said, “We don’t allow people to try to gather sensitive information or share malicious software.” They said they did not allow people (me) to:
>Get access to accounts or data without permission
>Encourage someone to give away their password or username
>Use phishing or malicious software to get someone’s login info
>Gather sensitive information or share malicious software
Huh? I wouldn’t know how to do that even if I wanted to. I did post a link to an article. But usually if I go to a dodgy website, my own system tells me not to go there, and I don’t. That didn’t happen here. So what the actual what?
I figure someone reported me or a bot picked up a word it didn’t like. I was given a chance to protest the decision—which I did—and was told I’d hear something within four days—which didn’t happen. Never did hear from them.
Good grief, Facebook.
Wanderlustful 