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Facebook's Purported Bias Against Atheists

Mr. Scott

Under the Amazing One's Wing
Mr. Scott
Joined
Nov 23, 2005
Messages
2,546
The site has a reputation for bowing to religious whiners who complain that criticism of their faith is hate speech. Ironically, Zuckerberg is purported to be an atheist himself.

Facebook once banned me from posting anything there for 24 hours for sharing a fact about a specific religion, and warned my that I'd be permanently banned if I had another violation. This made me angry enough to decide to report to Facebook moderators as hate speech when religious people call atheists stupid, and wish they'd suffer and die and burn in hell for eternity.

I've successfully had several such posts removed. Wish we could make this a spreading meme.
 
I'm not going to walk away from Facebook, yet. Too many friends and atheist connections there. It's really about "let's see what happens if I do this" and it's been interesting so far. How is "I hope you burn in hell" not hate speech?
 
I use facebook simply as a people database.

Every now and then I read though the list of things people have considered important enough to tell the world and I weep and swear never to read them again. Until next time.


The thing is, telephone numbers, email addresses and even names change, but people keep the smae FB account, so I can't actually get rid of the account. I just post nothing.
 
Mr. Scott said:
The site has a reputation for bowing to religious whiners who complain that criticism of their faith is hate speech. Ironically, Zuckerberg is purported to be an atheist himself.

Facebook once banned me from posting anything there for 24 hours for sharing a fact about a specific religion, and warned my that I'd be permanently banned if I had another violation. This made me angry enough to decide to report to Facebook moderators as hate speech when religious people call atheists stupid, and wish they'd suffer and die and burn in hell for eternity.

I've successfully had several such posts removed. Wish we could make this a spreading meme.
Click to expand...

Which proves that the reputation is wrong and reality is that Facebook is "bowing to religious whiners who complain that criticism of their faith is hate speech."
 
It's easy enough to get a contentious post deleted by FB. All you have to do is organise a few friends to report it as hate speech, pornography or whatever. I've seen it done dozens of times, against all sorts of people and causes. Facebook isn't biased against anybody or anything - they just ban stuff that gets reported to them by enough people.
So stop the whining, it's unbecoming.
 
sophia8 said:
It's easy enough to get a contentious post deleted by FB. All you have to do is organise a few friends to report it as hate speech, pornography or whatever. I've seen it done dozens of times, against all sorts of people and causes. Facebook isn't biased against anybody or anything - they just ban stuff that gets reported to them by enough people.
So stop the whining, it's unbecoming.
Click to expand...

It good you don't see a problem. It's as true that if you don't look yon won't see.
 
sophia8 said:
It's easy enough to get a contentious post deleted by FB. All you have to do is organise a few friends to report it as hate speech, pornography or whatever. I've seen it done dozens of times, against all sorts of people and causes. Facebook isn't biased against anybody or anything - they just ban stuff that gets reported to them by enough people.
So stop the whining, it's unbecoming.
Click to expand...

Stop whining about whining, it's bullying.

I don't know who you are saying is whining. The OP is just "here's the reputation," "here's what I did, "here's what happened."

I don't think it's true that fb moderates by complain count. In fact, there's some automation in flagging postings that involves no hunan intervention. I'm pretty sure they have boob detector software that misfires occasions, and also improperly auto-bans fine art. It stands to reason that there'd be auto-banning via text as well.

In fact, the atheist-bashing posts I reported as hate speech, according to the status dashboard, were deleted by the poster before the fb moderators reviewed them. This sounds kind of fishy to me, as if the poster had received a warning of some sort before the fb moderators could hammer him.
 
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I very seldom use Facebook. The most active period I had was when I subscribed to several "groups", one of which was a very active Atheist group. We had a lot of interesting and in-depth discussions and debates.
Then, one day, it was simply gone. No one knew why. The moderators said they were not told either. The whole thing simply vanished.
We all assumed it was because of some complaint or other, but the Facebook staff wouldn't even reply to questions.
Now, although Facebook still has discussion groups, they are not easy to find. There is no page for them that I can find, nor any search function.
You just have to put in a search term in the regular search box and then wade through all the unrelated hits you get.
 
Bikewer said:
I very seldom use Facebook. The most active period I had was when I subscribed to several "groups", one of which was a very active Atheist group. We had a lot of interesting and in-depth discussions and debates.
Then, one day, it was simply gone. No one knew why. The moderators said they were not told either. The whole thing simply vanished.
We all assumed it was because of some complaint or other, but the Facebook staff wouldn't even reply to questions.
Now, although Facebook still has discussion groups, they are not easy to find. There is no page for them that I can find, nor any search function.
You just have to put in a search term in the regular search box and then wade through all the unrelated hits you get.
Click to expand...

How long ago was this? There are many, many busy atheist groups on Facebook, and they are a constant presence on my news feed. I've always been invited to join, never searched for them.
 
You want to play on someone else's swings, you play by their rules.

You don't want to play by their rules, bugger off and find another playground.
 
3point14 said:
You want to play on someone else's swings, you play by their rules.

You don't want to play by their rules, bugger off and find another playground.
Click to expand...
Or put another way, people complaining about how they are treated by Facebook is equivalent to corn complaining about how it is treated by the farmer.
 
Mr. Scott said:
How is "I hope you burn in hell" not hate speech?
Click to expand...

If I say, "You will die someday." That isn't hate speech because I believe it's a neutral fact. If I also believe in Heaven/Hell, then the statement, "I hope you burn in hell" is expressing my wish for divine justice, not necessarily hate.

A better example might be seeing someone shoplifting and stating, "I hope you get caught and have to pay a fine."

Depending on the doctrine, it might be more "saintly" to say, "I hope you get saved by Jesus and avoid hell," but some doctrines have predestination and a limited number of saved people, so you can't tell if that's an available "out."

You might try asking, in response, "Are you saying you hope I never get saved and avoid hell?"
 
Mr. Scott said:
I don't think it's true that fb moderates by complain count. In fact, there's some automation in flagging postings that involves no hunan intervention. I'm pretty sure they have boob detector software that misfires occasions, and also improperly auto-bans fine art. It stands to reason that there'd be auto-banning via text as well.
Click to expand...

Actually, it seems they outsource it to overseas firms who hire people to screen posts and images for $1 an hour for up to 4 hours a day.

http://gawker.com/5885714/inside-fa...el-toes-are-more-offensive-than-crushed-heads

http://gawker.com/5885836/facebook-releases-new-content-guidelines-now-allows-bodily-fluids
 
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