Yesterday I posted a comment here announcing that I was suddenly getting a wave referrals from Facebook after over a year of virtually none at all. The phenomenon has continued today. I think the post being passed around is the recent “Unethical Tweet of the Week” by the book censoring administrator. It is the first post to pick up significant traffic from Facebook in almost a year.
I did a little experimenting early this morning. Apparently Facebook has gone from banning all links to Ethics Alarms as “not consistent with Facebook community standards” to only banning some links, using criteria that is not rational, coherent, communicated nor clear. I tested on my Facebook page using random links. My list of 99 unethical rationalizations got through; yesterday’s post about how directed verdicts work in some movies didn’t, because apparently writing about the Western bounty hunter/hit man Tom Horn “violates community standards.” Facebook objects to Steve McQueen movies?
I don’t appreciate this half-reprieve, because 1) it’s not even half 2) nobody deserves gratitude for stopping what they shouldn’t have done in the first place 3) especially when they haven’t really stopped.
This HAS taught me how the social media and big tech companies work to manipulate public opinion and suppress information and ideas that make it harder for the dictatorially woke to take over the world, and everyone should be concerned about that. Meanwhile, now I have no sense of whether a particular post’s link will be rejected, and there is always the risk that some post will brush against the third rail of Facebook Enforced Conformity, and cause the whole blog to be banned again. When I was testing links, one of the recent posts that was rejected had a “Related” link to the old post about Fred Astaire and blackface. That post is the prime suspect as Blog Post Zero in Facebook’s war on Ethics Alarms. If you discuss blackface and related issues, after all, you’re a racist. This is the level of Facebook’s sophisticated analysis.
When I was studying B.F. Skinner’s work in college, I learned that both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement were effective in training rats, but intermittent reinforcement, where the same conduct was rewarded and punished unpredictably, drove the rats crazy.
I see what your game is, Facebook…
Ethics Alarms 
They’re either gas-lioning, or sea-lighting you; or (SHUDDER) both!
”where the same conduct was rewarded and punished unpredictably, drove the rats crazy.”
Season 3/episode 7 of Kojak, Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Death, kinda deals with that same theme.
Online filters are weird. My work firewall thinks any discussion of the “Nation of Assholes” or the “Naked Teacher Principle” is “Adult/Mature” content and blocks the page. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before HR calls me in.
Reminds me of my schooling.
I tried to link to the To Kill A Mockingbird/Tom Horn post using Tiny Url and it wouldn’t let me. I asked how the post violated community standards. Haven’t heard back. Not expecting to.
No, Facebook doesn’t answer such queries. I’ve sent dozens.
Send them a picture of your upraised middle finger. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Imagine trying to create advertising campaigns for clients using Facebook or Instagram.
Their capriciousness extends even to revenue generation.
The woke social media zombies are inscrutable.
I’ve periodically tried posting links on Facebook to your posts here, with similar inconsistent results. Sometimes they stick with no problem, sometimes I get the “community standards” rejection, and a few times even those have been released after I appealed. You may be on some sort of double secret probation that gets you extra scrutiny, with variable results depending on whether you’re being reviewed in India, Romania, Malaysia, Bangladesh….
Linked to today’s blog post (this one) just after my comment above. Not rejected, still up.
I share links to Ethics Alarms in a comment to a post like this one…
Or share a link like this…