Sometimes I just hate Facebook. One of those times was this past Sunday. I was minding my own business responding to some of the replies to a post I made in several groups last week. I certainly wasn’t offending anyone; in fact, the post which I was discussing could not be considered the least bit offensive either. Its message was to encourage all Democrats and progress independents to play nice with each other in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. In it I urged them not get trapped into fighting among themselves like we in 2016 which was certainly to Trump’s advantage and gave the Russians an opportunity to try to drive a wedge between us. I can’t imagine that even the worst Trump troll would be offended by that post.
And no, I didn’t break the new Facebook rule which mandates that if you post more than 50 times a day you are to be sent to Facebook jail. I probably only posted only 5 or 6 times Sunday (all answers to replies by others) and I probably posted less than that the day before. Bottom line, I don’t know what rule I broke (providing of course that I broke one) and that’s what ticks me off the most!
When I tried to post that final time Sunday, I got the following message:
You’re temporarily restricted from joining and posting to groups that you do not manage until Wednesday at 12:12 PM. If you think you’re seeing this by mistake, please let us know.
The “let us know” phrase is a hyperlink that you are obviously supposed to click if you think that you were “restricted” unfairly. Not knowing what the hells was going on, I clicked on that link and in the resulting window there was an area that I could use to make my appeal.
Not long ago, before Facebook changed their procedures, if you filed an appeal a human would eventually check your comments, investigate, and then restore your posting privileges if he/she decided that you “didn’t violate Facebook’s social standards” after all. Well, apparently Facebook has taken the human element out of the equation because over the space where you can file your appeal there is a statement that reads:
To help keep Facebook safe, we sometimes block certain content and actions. If you think we’ve made a mistake, please let us know. While we aren’t able to review individual reports, the feedback you provide will help us improve the ways we keep Facebook safe. (The underline is mine for emphasis.)
Let me translate Facebook’s message for you: “You can complain that we did you was wrong to your heart’s content, but no one is going to read your crap so don’t hold your breath waiting for us do anything about your situation. And by the way, don’t bother asking us what you did wrong because we have no intention of telling you.”
If Facebook were your business, would this be anyway to treat your customers? You restrict their posting privileges, give them no recourse to object or appeal, and then you don’t even tell them what they did wrong. If they really want to “keep Facebook safe”, wouldn’t it make sense to tell people what they did wrong so that they could avoid doing that same thing again in the future?
Facebook has grown far too big to manage. The number of subscribers has grown from 100 million to 2.23 billion over the last ten years. In that mix it is estimated that there are 83 million fake profiles. How do you manage the online behavior of 2,230 million people, a number of whom aren’t even who they pretend to be? The easy answer is that it is almost impossible without some very sophisticated artificial intelligence software that hasn’t been invented yet and in which Facebook apparently has zero interest in developing.
Is it any wonder that that Russian operatives were apparently able to operate through Facebook to attack our democracy with impunity? Facebook recently claimed that it removed 70 accounts and 138 pages belonging to Russian troll farms. Whoo-hoo, that’s impressive! Is anyone naive enough to believe this was anything but a tiny percentage of Russia’s malignant presence on Facebook?
How is Facebook responding? Apparently to subdue the Russians and the rest of us who are up to no good they have imposed simplistic software rules. If people post to fast, they must be spammers, so send them to Facebook jail. If people post too much, they must be a spammers, so send them to Facebook jail. If someone reports someone else for any reason, the reported person must be guilty, so send them to Facebook jail. And heaven knows how many other rules are in effect at any one time that we don’t even know about because the rules change all of the time without notice.
Regardless, there is never any explanation of what the “guilty party” might have done wrong and there certainly isn’t any way to appeal the software’s verdict. Sure, it pisses their customers off, but Facebook doesn’t care because, 1) they don’t believe that we will quit using Facebook and 2) even if we do, it doesn’t matter because they have over a billion other customers so they won’t miss us.
On the other hand, Facebook have apparently had no problems with investing heavily in sophisticated software which parses every post we make looking for information which might be valuable to advertisers. And since they are convinced of our undying loyalty, they also have no problem selling that information to anyone with enough money, even if they pay in rubles.
However, Facebook management doesn’t seem to be paying attention to one business maximum that has always universally applied – no matter how much your customers seem to believe that they need to continue to use your services, if you fail to treat them with respect over a long enough period of time, they will figure out a way to do without you.
Cajun 8/17/2018