by Didi Rankovic, Reclaim The Net:
Even after appeal.
Facebook sure has its own interpretation of what constitutes broad-minded tolerance – not to mention, legal speech.
One religion’s central postulates should not be more or less acceptable than another’s, whether the “moderator” (that is, censor, a person or a machine) agrees or not.
But when a Christian posts that, “Jesus died so you could live” – which would be one of the religion’s core beliefs – the person behind the post may yet end up accused of “hate speech” over on Facebook.
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Take former Blaze writer, journalist Billy Hallowell, who shared just such a statement on the giant network. The startling response by Facebook was not only to eventually delete the post, but also explain the censorship as a response to “hate speech.”
Agree with that or not – as with any other religion’s dearly held beliefs – but what exactly’s “hateful” about that? If anything, the phrase clearly speaks of selflessness and sacrifice for the good of others.
Hallowell shared about this on Twitter, backed up by screenshots, and a comment stating that the incident was, in his opinion, “very, very bizarre.”
But there’s also been an appeals process, which didn’t help. Whoever/whatever reviews these complaints over on Facebook, stuck to their guns.
Hallowell first clicked “post” on Facebook around April 2 (so that would have been around Easter time, making the message he was trying to spread more pertinent). But the post quickly got flagged for allegedly violating community hate speech policy – and received a warning that it could be “reviewed.”
At that point, the punishment that Facebook’s censoring machine thought fit the “crime” was to make the post invisible to anyone but the author.
That Jesus died so his followers could live – like the notion or not – is just the principle of the religion.
So instead of justifying the extreme downrank of the – factual in that sense – post with, “we have these (hate speech) standards so that everyone feels safe, respected and welcome” – perhaps a non-mindless Facebook “moderation” system would have understood it was precisely reactions like these that made Christians feel neither “safe, respected, nor welcome.”
Then it got worse. The post was deleted altogether after an “appeal.”
“Your appeal was reviewed,” claimed Facebook, adding, “We are unable to show content that goes against our community standards on hate speech.”
