Meta's Oversight Board Takes Up Permanent Bans In Landmark Case (techcrunch.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta's Oversight Board is tackling a case focused on Meta's ability to permanently disable user accounts. Permanent bans are a drastic action, locking people out of their profiles, memories, friend connections, and, in the case of creators and businesses, their ability to market and communicate with fans and customers. This is the first time in the organization's five-year history as an oversight body that permanent account bans have been a subject of the Oversight Board's focus, the organization notes.
The case being reviewed isn't exactly one of an everyday user. Instead, the case involves a high-profile Instagram user who repeatedly violated Meta's Community Standards by posting visual threats of violence against a female journalist, anti-gay slurs against politicians, content depicting a sex act, allegations of misconduct against minorities, and more. The account had not accumulated enough strikes to be automatically disabled, but Meta made the decision to permanently ban the account. The Board's materials didn't name the account in question, but its recommendations could impact others who post content that targets public figures with abuse, harassment, and threats, as well as users who have their accounts permanently banned without receiving transparent explanations.
Meta referred this specific case to the Board, which included five posts made in the year before the account was permanently disabled. The Board says it's looking for input about several key issues: how permanent bans can be processed fairly, the effectiveness of its current tools to protect public figures and journalists from repeated abuse and threats of violence, the challenges of identifying off-platform content, whether punitive measures effectively shape online behaviors, and best practices for transparent reporting on account enforcement decisions. [...] Whether the Oversight Board has any real sway to address issues on Meta's platform continues to be debated, of course. [...] After the Oversight Board issues its policy recommendations to Meta, the company has 60 days to respond. The Board is also soliciting public comments on this topic. The report notes that Meta's Oversight Board is able to overturn individual moderation decisions and offer recommendations, but largely sidelined from major policy shifts driven by Mark Zuckerberg.
The case being reviewed isn't exactly one of an everyday user. Instead, the case involves a high-profile Instagram user who repeatedly violated Meta's Community Standards by posting visual threats of violence against a female journalist, anti-gay slurs against politicians, content depicting a sex act, allegations of misconduct against minorities, and more. The account had not accumulated enough strikes to be automatically disabled, but Meta made the decision to permanently ban the account. The Board's materials didn't name the account in question, but its recommendations could impact others who post content that targets public figures with abuse, harassment, and threats, as well as users who have their accounts permanently banned without receiving transparent explanations.
Meta referred this specific case to the Board, which included five posts made in the year before the account was permanently disabled. The Board says it's looking for input about several key issues: how permanent bans can be processed fairly, the effectiveness of its current tools to protect public figures and journalists from repeated abuse and threats of violence, the challenges of identifying off-platform content, whether punitive measures effectively shape online behaviors, and best practices for transparent reporting on account enforcement decisions. [...] Whether the Oversight Board has any real sway to address issues on Meta's platform continues to be debated, of course. [...] After the Oversight Board issues its policy recommendations to Meta, the company has 60 days to respond. The Board is also soliciting public comments on this topic. The report notes that Meta's Oversight Board is able to overturn individual moderation decisions and offer recommendations, but largely sidelined from major policy shifts driven by Mark Zuckerberg.
That man's name (Score:2, Insightful)
Donald Trump.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, shows there's no such thing as a permanent ban on Facebook. They've backtracked on numerous "permanent bans".
Key issues (Score:2)
Why a human committee? (Score:1)
Everything should be AI now, what is Facebook's problem?
Re: (Score:2)
what is Facebook's problem?
I think it'd be obvious their problem is . . . AI.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of it is, and it works terribly.
Recently I got hit with a 30 day account restriction because their insane AI thought I was dealing drugs on facebook after I commented on a friends post ;-
"""As best as I can tell, Cocaines major demographic is rich folks in New york, LA and Florida. Thats why you aren't seeing arrests""""
I appealed on the basis of "What the fuck?" and they reversed the decision and undeleted the post but kept the restrictions? Exceedingly strange decision making. Needless to say, my ex
So then, (Score:1)
the case involves a high-profile Instagram user who repeatedly violated Meta's Community Standards by posting visual threats of violence against a female journalist, anti-gay slurs against politicians, content depicting a sex act, allegations of misconduct against minorities, and more
So then they banned Donald Trump?
Oppression and oligarchy, arise (Score:1)
The second is, Fox News runs a propaganda campaign declaring their new best friend is a victim of evil liberals and 'woke' misinformation.
How? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do I go about getting mine permanently banned? Every time I disable the account it ends up getting magically enabled again.
These FB bans are insane... (Score:3)
I have had a businessman have his entire commercial stuff completely Zucced for a few months. Banned by IP, name, etc. There was a good chunk of revenue lost. Once FB reinstated him a few months later, all Meta could promise him is that if he signed up for their commercial services, maybe they would get to his account quicker.
I had two close friends have their accounts obliterated. Took months.
Even myself, I got the Zucc treatment for a few hours because in 2020, someone posted something dodgy on a group I inherited in 2023, and they banned the group and all admins. Even after the unban, I was not allowed to use FB's advertising "service". Which is not exactly a major loss.
So, I would avoid Meta as a primary social media network. The ban-hammer will strike at random. You will find people stating terroristic threats which remain, while someone who used the word "assassin" gets account restrictions for 30 days.
Re: (Score:3)
Running a business through FB is just asking for trouble. It's a toy business that way, and he should count himself lucky he gets any money. It's like Ubering, you're at the mercy of one corporate that can do what it likes with you.
It'd be better for everyone if FB just perma-banned everyone anyway. Social media going away would be a benefit for all.
Re: (Score:2)
Running a business through FB is just asking for trouble.
If you run a local business (in particular clothes / fashion accessories), your present and future customers follow you on Instagram and Facebook, and order through Whatsapp. You don't that the choice to avoid Meta if you want to make sales.
Re: (Score:2)
Ban them all! Then no one will be using social media.
Re: (Score:2)
Er, "assassin" in a TTRPG context.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they should set an account as read only (from the owner) instead of banning it totally. So the owner still has access to whatever content was uploaded by them.
Even allow them to put a single msg / auto responder to msgs, so that contacts can be informed where they are migrating to.
And after a year, delete the account, if still banned.
Denying people access to their own data should be (Score:1)
illegal.
Making an account "read only"/"frozen" so you don't get anything NEW in your feed and you can't post anything make sense, but you should be able to see what you've posted before and messages others have specifically sent to you.
Personally, if I ever got the ban-hammer from a company, I'd want a reasonably convenient way to download my history, including messages directed to me or to groups I am (er, was) a part of.
Re: (Score:1)
being stupid enough to have your only copy of your data on someone else's computer should be illegal.
Re: (Score:2)
Still a company should have the right to delete user data. Just give the user their full GDPR export.
I was banned after buying a Meta Quest 3 headset (Score:1)
Bought the headset for my 16 year old, I set it up for him and bought a few games, just so that he could immediately start playing with it on his birthday.
He doesn't have FB so I created a new Meta account, and somewhere along the line it also created a FB profile for that account. No big deal, no one's ever gonna use that anyway.
Just a few weeks later my personal FB and IG accounts were suspended, as well as a couple rarely active business pages I run.
Their claim was "I violated the rules", although not sa
\o/ (Score:2)
Do the world a favour - lock everyone out of their accounts
Something's not right... (Score:2)
If you visit /r/facebook you will see dozens of people a day posting how their accounts are getting strikes and even banned in what appear to increasingly be
AI moderation utterly failing to be able to parse context.
Now, sure maybe some got strikes for real stuff they're not showing/saying but there's a clear pattern.
Anecdote is not evidence, but I've certainly had FB give me warnings over really innocuous stuff that in context was clearly not what I was being accused of
(to give an example, a friend posted a