Making the world more open for some

“Making the world more open and connected,” a slogan that Facebook has used for years but is it more open and connected for everyone or just who will benefit the business? Facebook is supposed to be a sort of safe space for all but in recent months there has been an increase of people being placed into “Facebook jail” for speaking out against police brutality and systemic racism while others who are displaying the racism aren’t being affected at all. 

In Las Vegas KaNesha McGee had a post blocked and removed from her page for sharing a video of police brutally attacking a woman. 

In most cases It takes just 15 minutes for Facebook to delete posts  for violating its community standards for hate speech. And then are warned if they posted it again, they would be banned for 72 hours.

A trove of internal documents reviewed by ProPublica sheds new light on the secret guidelines that Facebook’s censors use to distinguish between hate speech and legitimate political expression. The documents reveal the rationale behind seemingly inconsistent decisions. For instance, Higgins’ incitement to violence passed muster because it targeted a specific sub-group of Muslims — those that are “radicalized” — while Delgado’s post was deleted for attacking whites in general.

According to USA Today Black activists say hate speech policies and content moderation systems formulated by a company built by and dominated by white men fail the very people Facebook claims it’s trying to protect. Not only are the voices of marginalized groups disproportionately stifled, Facebook rarely takes action on repeated reports of racial slurs, violent threats and harassment campaignstargeting black users, they say.

Many of these users now think twice before posting updates on Facebook or they limit how widely their posts are shared. Yet few can afford to leave the single-largest and most powerful social media platform for sharing information and creating community.

The world can never get better if we don’t work together to make it better. Now it needs to be an equal playing field.