[stareatgoats]

Interesting times, and a slippery slope. These fairly square rules will surely cause other uproars as it invites back the alt-right with their tongue-in-cheek fascism. And the Facebook algorithms seem embarrassingly incapable of nuance, like this Tommy Robinson debacle: the mere mention of the name "Tommy Robinson" in a post (in Sweden) renders your profile inactive for several days or indefinitely. In other countries the post is simply deleted. In other words, any other person called Tommy Robinson would not be able to have a FB presence.

I'm no fan of Tommy Robinson but this is worrying as FB has become more of a utility for online discussion and publishing. The problem is partly technical, but ultimately it is caused by the fact that Facebook doesn't have a value system of it's own. They need to follow the bidding of the powers that squeeze them the most.

[richrichardsson]

Where are you getting this information that mentioning Yaxley-Lennon's alter-ego gets the post deleted? Appears to be nonsense to me, I have seen plenty of posts with that name in them.

[stareatgoats]

Can't blame you for finding this strange, it has not been reported widely since Tommy acquired his well deserved pariah status. But you will find it on the second page or so using a internet search provider of your choice, predictably on unsavory pages that also might call for the death of large portions of the worlds population solely on basis of their beliefs. You efforts might lead to tweets like these: https://twitter.com/blondesoulbird/status/115134913120768409...

But I can also assure you this happened to the moderator of a group I'm in (he did it as a test to check the veracity of the claim). He typed "test Tommy Robinson" in a post to his friends. His account was disabled for 3 days.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/kallkritik/permalink/6131282... (in Swedish)

[richrichardsson]

Certainly not the case in the UK, I literally posted "Just testing: Tommy Robinson" yesterday after seeing your reply; post was left intact, friends can view and comment, and I'm not locked out of Facebook.

[stareatgoats]

It does (did?) seem to happen mostly in Scandinavian countries if you scrutinize the search results.

[efa]

What is tongue-in-cheek fascism? Example.

[stareatgoats]

Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/23/alt-right...

[pjc50]

He's still all over Youtube.

[ravenstine]

We wouldn't allow the American government to behave this way, but somehow it's okay if a big corporation takes control of a large portion of communication and enacts these draconian rules. But it's a private totalitarian state. /s

[kazagistar]

At least when the government does it, you have a presumed outlet of voting for one that doesn't. When a corporation does something you have no outlet if it has an effective monopoly or they all do it or you just have negative net worth and cannot possibly vote with your dollars.

[dhhdhdsbdb]

Otoh, governments can detain, arrest, or kill you and your family. Regardless of whether you can vote.

Both corporations and governments have a history of bad behavior. But I warrant the government ledger has much worse capacity to do me harm, as well as a few orders of magnitude more deaths caused by their decisions.