In a strangely recursive episode in the ongoing series "social media sites you don’t own are not okay to have as your primary web contact," Facebook took down a post I shared in July about another Meta company’s bad moderation.
My post that was removed was a news story about a Toronto City Councillor whose Instagram account was suspended because it "pretended to speak for a public figure, like a politician," despite the fact that she is, in fact, that politician, noted because… well, social media sites you don’t own are not okay to have as your primary web contact.
My post, Facebook now claims, violates their community rules.
Which community rule? It claims it was spam, trying to get "likes, follows, and views in a misleading way."
I’m not quite sure how saying "don’t rely on centralized social media" is trying to get more attention on social media.
This isn’t the first time, or first way that Meta (and other social media networks) have banned, shadow-banned, or even altered content that is true, but they don’t like or don’t want to compete with.
It is absolutely their right to do so.
There’s a fake downtown near where I live. It looks like a downtown shopping area. It’s even called "The Greene Town Center."
It is emphatically not a public downtown. It is a shopping mall. The entirety of the development is private property, not public land like a downtown. Shortly after it opened, several sociology students at my university did a project comparing how they were treated based on how they were dressed. Surprise: Those who were dressed poorly were quickly intercepted by Greene security — yes, they have mall cops — and "encouraged" to leave {1}.
They can do that — because no matter how much The Greene looks like a downtown, it is not.
In the same way, social media sites that are centrally owned — all of them — are like the Greene. People talk about "my wall" or "my feed" or "my page", but it isn’t.
So while it’s not cool that Meta took down a post criticizing another Meta company… they are perfectly within their rights to do so.
It’s their space.
Not mine, and not yours.
Don’t forget that.
{1} This was shortly after it opened, around 2010.
Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay