RE: A short rant about government, secrecy and censorship.
Technically, most of the censorship is automatic now in that Facebook staff input the parameters, the keywords, the images, the videos, the links, the specific things, that they choose to ban, delete, flag, hide, etc. Now, in the past, most of the censorship was manual in that people would click on the report button to flag the posts, the comments, the messages, etc, which would notify the moderators who would then delete those things in most cases if you are a conservative posting the stuff and generally ignore the flags, the reported content, if you're a leftist. Like a free pass, a double standard. Well, based on my own observations, most of the censorship is automatic now and is constantly updated. They continue to add new things onto their ban list. Sadly, they probably keep the ban list private. But if they wanted to be honest, they would keep their ban list public so that we could make sure we don't put any of those things onto Facebook. It is that simple. If they want us not to do it, then they should tell us not to do it. Common sense 101 lol.
I agree with most of what you said. I'm not sure about the conservative/liberal right/left bent, though, have heard of that before and I'm open minded to it. I agree, they should have the ban list public so we can know. And I also have to wonder what event triggered them to suddenly ban that image, I doubt it was me like you said and more automated... But, I'm sure SOMETHING triggered them to suddenly ban that image and I wonder what it was.
Technically, it can be more complex than that. For example, if Facebook was tax-payer funded, then they should be liable in the same way government is supposed to be accountable to the voters who also pay taxes. In other words, if Facebook is governmental, then they should not be treated like private companies. Also, Facebook should have been honest from day one concerning their rules. But one of the problems is in how Facebook changes their rules again and again and Facebook selectively enforces their rules when they want and to whoever they want. Facebook said it was a platform for all ideas and Facebook has violated that statement. That is a scam. So, they should be sued or taken to court for fraud and for other things as well including violating the fourth amendment.