“Facebook jail” is a term popularly used when the social media platform suspends an Account for violation of their Community Standards.

One of my guilty pleasures is going on right wing pages and punching back at racists who insult me, giving them a taste of their own medicine. For this, I have gotten comments flagged, being reported by these racists who can dish it but can’t take it.

In the wee hours of the morning of October 20, I got a notice from Facebook saying that my account had been suspended for 30 days for saying something that went against their community standards. Usually, when Facebook flags a comment, they put it in your notifications. This time there was none. I also looked at some of my recent posts to see had been taken down. They were still there.

I went onto my Facebook Lite version to see if any more information could be elicited. The reason they gave for suspending my account was two previous violations, one in December 2019 and the other in July of this year. These violations I had already been sanctioned for so I know that they must have made a mistake. I tried repeatedly to appeal but got the response “We could not process your request. Please try again later”.

I decided to go on different discussion forums to see what problems others were having with Facebook censors. Some said that they got suspended for sharing memes but the friend who was the source of it was not. Others spoke about how arbitrary Facebook censors are.

For those who don’t know, Facebook moderates content with a mixture of algorithms (artificial intelligence) and human oversight. The algorithms are supposed to automatically flag what is deemed as going against the platform’s community standards. The problem I have found with the algorithms is that they flag content without regard for context.

For example, in July somebody posted a meme of Joe Biden’s controversial comment “You ain’t black unless I say you black” and made the comment “Y’all too stupid to think to think for yourself”. I made what I regarded as a sarcastic response “Black people are too stupid to think for themselves, thank you”. Facebook flagged this comment as “hate speech” and cited this as one of the comments they were suspending my account. I also read an account by Dr. Boyce Watkins saying that he was suspended for publishing an article entitled “Hit the Coon” which was a game played at fairs years ago.

Facebook’s community standards are extremely vague and therefore subject to interpretations by censors who seem to act on what offends them personally.

I tried in vain to contact somebody to appeal my suspension to no avail. Similar experiences were shared by others on public forums that I visited.

Since Facebook does not charge its account holders, its management may feel that it is not obligated to respond to concerns that are raised. However, Facebook earns more than 90% of its revenue from advertising which is dependent on levels of engagement by users.

With the volume of content that Facebook has to moderate, it is only practical that artificial intelligence be used to detect offending content. However, their needs to be human engagement especially when appeals are made. Their community standards need to be more specific and not as vague as they are at present. This will give its users and censors clear boundaries and guidelines by which to operate. I also think that Facebook needs to have a more culturally diverse group of censors.

Inspite of the above, I still enjoy being on Facebook and hope that over time, their censorship policies will improve.

(c) A. Pierre Sobers