This month, for the first time, I was locked out of my Facebook account and prohibited from sending messages and making posts.
What did I do wrong?
Journalism.
The automatic moderation system flagged a post of mine from April in which I posted a news story I did about a school bus aide seen on video abusing non-verbal children.
When I looked closer at why the technology flagged the post, the system characterized it in a seriously disturbing way by claiming I was the one doing something horrible to children. See the graphic below.
It’s extremely disconcerting that Facebook’s automatic system would apply such a label to my posting and news story.
It also should be noted the parents in my news story spoke very publicly about the incident and wanted this video and story in the news.
When I requested a review of my post, the automatic system quickly kicked back a denial of my appeal. I was prohibited from posting and sending messages for a few days.
My account is also restricted from creating ads, and is restricted from earning money, which I don’t do as a journalist, but the principle of it does irk me a bit.
This situation seems to be a dystopian precursor to what we may continue to experience as companies use artificial intelligence to interact with customers.
As I experienced this, I was able to still consume Facebook content which ironically is absolutely polluted with AI generated images that seem to pander to sympathy for veterans. See this NPR article about this phenomenon that clearly demonstrates Facebook’s moderation efforts have failed.
I also continue to receive multiple spam and scam messages through Facebook daily from fake pages, scam artists and other nefarious accounts. Oh, there’s also the persistent issue of fake pages being crated with my name and image that seem to be routinely published with no problem.
What a disaster.
The lack of human discretion through Facebook’s moderation system is clearly a problem and I’ve read other accounts, like when Meta suppressed postings about breast cancer.
Something is seriously flawed on Facebook and it definitely seems artificial and not intelligent.
JEREMY JOJOLA 