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Apparently, all it takes to get banned from Facebook is to write an inoffensive genealogy blog oriented to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not only is this blog banned from posting, but you also can't even put the URL into a comment or post. Here is the notice.
The Community Standards include authenticity, safety, privacy, and dignity. See https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/. Contrary to these standards, I was not warned and further, I have no idea what there is about my blog posts that violates any one of the standards.
I am somewhat honored to be classified in the same category as Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and other great banned authors but at least when they ban Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn I can guess the reason. I guess I could speculate that FamilySearch got tired of me posting about RootsTech or whatever, but having the blog banned puts me into an interesting group of writers considering the content I frequently see on Facebook. I realize that someone who did not care for genealogy or the Church could have complained and started this process but I would hope that someone at Facebook would at least review the decision to ban me without notice and yes, I have responded several times that I find nothing in my blog posts that even closely approaches offensive.
I guess I can join the ranks of my ancestors who were persecuted, mobbed, and forced to leave the United States under threat of death for their beliefs. Although I can hardly take Facebook that seriously. By the way, so far, I can keep posting on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and my blogs are still being posted right here.
This blog does not violate those community standards. Facebook has defamed you by saying that it does. Something that should definitely be written into US federal law is that when a company censors in this way it should be compelled to be specific as to what content has violated precisely which of the community standards. This would both improve transparency and also open up companies to considerable legal liability for their censorious activities. Where such purported violations do not actually exist then a legal remedy should be available to not only force the company to give restitution but force them to pay substantial statutory punitive damages for their censorship and indeed force them to pay the court costs of the party they have wrongly censored.
ReplyDeleteSuch a law would greatly reduce unwarranted corporate censorship as it would cumulatively cost the censorious companies a great deal of money, time and effort to defend the claims. Alternatively it would force them to actually be explicit in their terms and conditions about unwarranted censorship so people would know about that censorship beforehand and therefore know to avoid doing business with the company in question.
James, this is really offensive on Facebook's part! Thank heavens that the other media platforms and your blogs have not been censored! Everything anymore just seems to be so completely upside down. Keep doing the right thing! Bonnie
ReplyDeleteThanks Bonnie.
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