Several Facebook users had their accounts blocked or suspended over the weekend for posting an article featuring a picture of Australian Aboriginal men in chains.
The post was made in the context of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison claiming there was no slavery in Australia. Before a day later, he backed up on those comments.
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What was it about?
A Facebook user had posted a refutation of the assertion by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that Australia had never had slavery - comments that he retracted a day later. The user's post featured an 1890s photo depicting Aboriginal men in chains.
Facebook deleted the post and limited the account of the man, saying the photo contained nudity and violated community standards on the site, the Guardian wrote.
Guardian Australia announced on Saturday, June 13, that Facebook apologized for stopping an Australian user from posting the picture from the 1890s incorrectly.
The post was restored after Facebook asked Guardian Australia whether the photo had been flagged in error. Facebook apologized to the user late Friday and had the post restored.
A spokeswoman for the company said the removal was the result of an automated process and was an error.
"We apologize for this mistake," she told The Guardian.
Yet dozens of other Facebook users reported the same problems when attempting to repost a link to the article in the Guardian. Some were even banned for trying to share it for up to 30 days, the Guardian reported.
Among those who couldn't share the news article was the man who first posted the image to his profile on his Twitter account.
I just tried to post this article, it immediately blocked the post, gave me no chance to appeal or dispute, case closed and put my account on restricted use for 24hours. If you look at my “history of not following standards.” It’s just this incident shown twice https://t.co/CzweUNCwL6 pic.twitter.com/lGmQzSBAGd — Hacklock - The Console Cowboy of Cyberspace (@hacklocked) June 15, 2020
Facebook appeared to allow the article to be posted on Monday afternoon, June 15, after more requests from Guardian Australia. Usually, Facebook allows users to request a sample of any takedowns. It has restored 613,000 pieces of content after 2.1 m requests for review between January and March.
Many users reported having been told that Facebook has fewer workers to review takedowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. They are "trying to prioritize content review with the greatest potential for damage." On Monday, the social media company appeared to have permitted the sharing of the article without restriction or ban.
Disparities
Several people pointed to the disparity between Facebook's quick and inaccurate censoring content, which deemed to contain nudity and reluctance to take down inflammatory posts. Journalist and activist Cory Doctorow said the incident on Twitter demonstrated that Facebook was unable to regulate on the scale and that automated censorship was not equitably distributed, with some minority groups being more likely to censor their discussions.
And the fallout from this overblocking is not evenly distributed. Not only are some disfavored minorities (sex workers, queer people, people of color) more likely to have their discussions censored. 21/ — Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) June 13, 2020
Doctorow claimed that Facebook should not be granted additional duties in censoring content, as others have called for over Trump's posts on Twitter and Facebook in recent weeks. Instead, he said, Facebook should be reduced to a "size, to a scale where communities can set and enforce norms."
"Because the problem with [Facebook] isn't merely that [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg is uniquely unsuited to making decisions about the social lives and political discourse of 2.6 billion people ... it's that NO ONE is capable of doing that job. That job should not exist."
