Although many people think Facebook is silly, narcissistic, and inane, and refuse to join; it has become a powerful communications medium (often replacing email), and has become a powerful source of news. With its single news feed, it has made it easy and effective for users to monitor the news that they choose from multiple sources. On the news source side, Facebook has very effectively made it easy for major news organizations, small news organizations, political campaign offices, large businesses and small businesses to share their news with pictures, video, text and links.
It has also become easy for Facebook to be abusive with it’s power. Whether by malicious intentions, by immaturity, by technical problems, or by political bias; Facebook has the power to seriously damage the ability of a person or business to communicate in the modern world. When Facebook punishes a business or a person by limiting their features on Facebook or banning them entirely, they aren’t being open, collaborative, and community-building. They are being cavalier, careless, immature, over-dramatic, abusive, and draconian. In addition, they can do this without showing any proof that a page damaged the Facebook community or risked damage to the Facebook community.
PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER: WE NEED TO PROTECT OURSELVES FROM ABUSE AND TYRANNY IN COMMUNICATIONS
If anything, Facebook.com and Facebook.com/ArlingtonCardinal have enjoyed a mutual relationship while Arlington Cardinal shares and organizes content on the Facebook page, and Facebook gains from potential advertising revenue that is displayed on the page.
Without any courtesy, without any regard for our well-being, without any regard for our intentions, without any concern for our opportunity of defense, and without any previous offense; Facebook attacked the page Facebook.com/ArlingtonCardinal. Like a bully, Facebook used their power, and applied a severe penalty — a 30-day suspension of our ability to easily share links like the majority of people and businesses who enjoy on Facebook. That gives our competitors an advantage, and lowers our relevance among the Facebook community that enjoys getting their news on Facebook. While even a 3-day suspension would have been unfair, it would have been effective enough to get our attention. Instead it is obvious Facebook intended to use its power to seriously hurt Arlingtoncardinal.com without even detailing or providing a specific explanation about what we did that they didn’t like.
Apparently Facebook is capable of being negligent, capricious and cruel — overriding their responsibility to be fair and community-building. By simply linking to general guidelines as a hint to the policy trouble, and offering no communications or recourse, Facebook is showing an abhorrent level of immaturity. They are ignoring their responsibility of citizenship and ignoring their responsibility to be aligned with one of the most important guiding principles of the United States — open discourse and the First Amendment.
bul·ly
ˈbo͝olē/Submit
noun
plural noun: bullies1. a person who uses strength or power to harm or intimidate those who are weaker.
synonyms: persecutor, oppressor, tyrant, tormentor, intimidator; More
verb
3rd person present: bullies1.use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants.
“a local man was bullied into helping them”
synonyms: persecute, oppress, tyrannize, browbeat, harass, torment, intimidate, strong-arm, dominate
What If You Are Bullied By Facebook?
If you are bullied by Facebook, that might mean that if you own a business, and, for example, one of your competitors decides to get a group of people to falsely flag one of your posts on your official Facebook page for selling misleading products or services, the Facebook page for your business could be suspended or could have some of it’s features suspended. What if you get an onslaught of false accusations from the competitor — a setup? Might bully Facebook flippantly turn off your Facebook project?
What if a technical problem caused the misunderstanding? For example, what if a bot hit a false positive for misleading information or Fake News? Without any defense, would you be sent to Facebook jail with Facebook acting like a bully dictator?
What if you disagree with Facebook politically? What if you somehow cross the line — even by accident? Will an immature or arrogant or biased low-level employee of Facebook have the ability make a ruling about your page, and shut off your Facebook-dependent, adapted ability to communicate with your customers?
Maybe none of these scenarios would ever happen to you, but should any of us have to live with this fear or trepidation?
We should not be afraid to speak, or share information for fear of being judged by some arbitrary, unknown, unreachable bully.
What Happened to The Cardinal?
Monday June 26, 2017 at 5:50 a.m. Arlingtoncardinal.com was bullied by Facebook. The official Facebook page (Facebook.com/Arlingtoncardinal) received the following notice …
“Your page has been blocked from sharing links. This limit is temporary and expires Wednesday, July 26 at 5:50 a.m.”
Below the message were two buttons “Learn More” and “Appeal”
In the “Learn More” section you would probably expect to see a specific mention or reference to an actual violation of their policy.
Nothing. Simply a general troubleshooting page with an inpage link to Why are there limits on my Facebook Page?
Page Limits
Why are there limits on my Facebook Page?
Sometimes, we place limits on Pages that don’t follow the Facebook Pages Terms. For example, Pages that publish spam may be unpublished, or the Like button may be disabled on Pages that deceptively get likes. These limits apply to activity coming from the Page, not to posts other people publish on the Page.Limits on your Page may be temporary or permanent. You can find out at the top of your Page.
If you believe that your Page received limits by mistake, please let us know by going to your Page and clicking Appeal below the limit’s description at the top of your Page.
An appeal was made, and the appeal was rejected, again with no specific details in a message that referred to guidelines. Why won’t Facebook cite the policy violation? Is it because they don’t have a case?
Facebook Email Replying to the Appeal
Hi,
Your Page has been temporarily restricted for causing people to like or engage with it unintentionally in a misleading way. Our Page Terms state that: ‘Pages must not contain false, misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive claims or content.’ All Pages must comply with the Facebook Page Guidelines.
For more information, please read the Pages Terms:
https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php
For Pages you’d like to launch in the future, please first make adjustments to ensure you’re providing a good user experience and meeting our policies.
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
There was no reply from Facebook regarding the follow up message below …
The Cardinal sent this follow up message to the appeal
A 3-day suspension would get my attention. A 30-day suspension is simply bullying or damaging my business. Facebook has blocked sharing capability for Facebook.com/Arlingtoncardinal without any details on which specific article was violating your policies. I share major media articles and articles from a local news blog and I avoid any fringe or “fake news” websites. How am I supposed to operate if I am fearful I will share some article that will trigger the policy violation again? https://www.facebook.com/ArlingtonCardinal/posts/10155432974952380
The Cardinal page didn’t hurt the Facebook community, and certainly didn’t intend to hurt the Facebook community. Historically, the Arlington Cardinal page has been operated conscientiously — cautiously, even with worry, that such violations of Facebook policy would be avoided. Ironically, it is Facebook that has allowed the promotion of fake news; misleading advertising; and viral, journalistically unverified stories to spread across its social media platform. And Facebook.com/ArlingtonCardinal has NOT been spreading that garbage.
Ironically, just today, Mark Zuckerberg promoted Facebook’s effort to bring the world closer together.
As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people!
We’re making progress connecting the world, and now let’s bring the world closer together.
It’s an honor to be on this journey with you.
— Mark Zuckerberg June 27, 2017
We should ask Mark Zuckerberg, “How are Facebook’s false accusations, or unverified accusations with no recourse, and the resulting fear to communicate freely, going to help to bring the world closer together?”
Get updates from The Cardinal ALL NEWS FEEDS on Facebook. Just ‘LIKE’ the ‘Arlington Cardinal Page (become a fan of our page). The updates cover all posts and sub-category posts from The Cardinal — Arlingtoncardinal.com. You can also limit feeds to specific categories. See all of The Cardinal Facebook fan pages at Arlingtoncardinal.com/about/facebook …
Help fund The Cardinal Arlingtoncardinal.com/sponsor