Facebook's Self-Reporting Feature Closed Down #1 Atheist Page, Reopened After 24h
The self reporting feature on Facebook was intended to be used as a way to combat extremism, without Facebook itself having to do anything. The community members can report something, and after a certain threshold and automated actions taken, such as automatic removal of a group without much oversight from Facebook itself.
Atheist Republic is the largest secular group on any social network, with over 1.6 million members. But the unchecked mass reporting feature has been abused by a mass of users, both religious and other more militant atheists and competition with that group.
One of the moderators, Allie Jackson, had this to say about Facebook's policy: “They blame us for not following terms of service, or community standards, while the people harassing us get rewarded for organizing complaints over content they disagreed with.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had commented about being an atheist at one time, but was asked last Christmas if he was an atheist, to which he replied: "No. I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important."
Here are some links on the issue:
http://topyaps.com/atheists-restored
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/exclusive-facebook-has-been-regularly-shutting-down-atheist-and-ex-muslim-groups/
https://ultra.news/t-t/31216/facebook-shuts-worlds-biggest-page-atheists
Good article. I noticed that this reporting feature is how some viral sites get rid of their competitors. Facebook is still a massive network but it's acts like these that will make it irrelevant one day.
Yeah, the self-reporting is good, but a blind threshold for automated actions... that has issues when the actions are to shut down a page. That should not be automated at all! I hope they learn! Thanks for the comment :)