Let’s Talk About Community Standards

UPDATE: Well will you look at that?

I’ve written before about Facebook and how it hates you. And how they are huge liars. Guess what? That is pretty much still true. In this specific case, instead of supporting sexism and the victimization of young girls, as they have in the past, Facebook is enabling and assisting racism. So that’s lovely, except no. It really isn’t. It’s awful and should stop. Tony Robinson was shot by a police officer who was called to help him. Shooting is really not all that helpful. His family (full disclosure, I have met certain members of his family and they are lovely people who have frankly, suffered enough) has reported this page for, among other things, using their intellectual property, defaming their family member’s name, mimicking an actual support page, and the seizure of the page and the perversion of its original function. But the page is still up and still posting hate. Let’s examine the About section, wherein it specifically says that the page has been stolen.

The text reads: “This page was stolen from a defender of criminal Tony Robinson who rightfully died at the hands of the Madison Police Department as he engaged in violence.”

And apparently Facebook is OK with that. Let’s also look at this:

Text reads: “Thanks to my Anon friend who works at Facebook and was able to restore my page. Your shenanigans have failed, totalitarian scumbags! I now fully own this account as the other admins have been fully removed due to your reporting actions!”

So just to be clear, not only has Facebook responded to every report of this page with confirmation that despite the fact that it was stolen from the actual supporters and is being used to defame both the victim of violence but his family and the fact that it is both overtly racist and clearly bullying, the page does, actually, adhere to their community standards. Facebook supports and defends this kind of racism and harassment. And since I am more than willing to take a moment to model a tinfoil hat, how did this person get access to the original Justice for Tony Robinson page in the first place? Yes, their “friend who works at Facebook” could be a purely fictional attempt by a sad, hateful person to make themselves appear more powerful or connected than they really are. Or it could be that there is an extremely hateful and racist person who works at Facebook who possibly helped their friend access this page and is helping them keep it, which should not be acceptable to anyone, let alone the people who run a major corporate entity. At this point, given the person or persons who run this page are claiming direct support from some aspect of Facebook corporate, which you would think that someone else at Facebook should care about. because even if this is just one person who is horrible and his friend who is also horrible, they are being horrible under the guise of at least a modicum of support from Facebook. If it were me, and clearly it isn’t, because if I were in charge of this shit I would have just removed the page or reverted it to its original owner, I would make extremely sure that my giant, lucrative, publicly traded, business moved itself quickly and decisively away from this kind of harassment and cruelty. Why don’t we encourage them to do that? Go report. And when they respond to making it clear that they think this kind of page is perfectly acceptable to them, challenge that. And then do it again. Perhaps, if enough of us are diligent we can get rid of this foulness.