Facebook and Me
A couple of weeks ago, I was suspended from Facebook for month.
A damn month.
My crime? On my Juanita Jean Facebook page, I posted a syndicated cartoon published by newspapers across this country that was the work of Clay Bennett.
A nominated finalist for The Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning seven times, Bennett won the Prize in 2002. He’s also the recipient of the Sigma Delta Chi Award, the National Journalism Award, the National Cartoonist Society Award for Editorial Cartoons, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the John Fischetti Award, the National Headliner Award, the Thomas Nast Award from the Overseas Press Club, the Berryman Award from the National Press Foundation, and the Ranan Lurie/United Nations Political Cartoon Award.[3] On May 26, 2018, he was awarded the 2017 Divisional Award for Editorial Cartoons by the National Cartoonists Society.[4]
A past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Bennett lives in Chattanooga with his wife, artist Cindy Procious.[5] His work is syndicated internationally by The Washington Post Writers Group.[6]
It is this cartoon.
It is some guy in a Klan outfit with a tag on his shirt that says “White Nationalist.” He’s holding Donald Trump’s tie as a noose.
I published it on March 20th. I did not get my notice of suspension until November 15. Let me do the math for you – that’s 8 months. Hell, I made a baby once in 8 months.
I appealed because this cartoon was in the Washington Post, dammit. Facebook affirmed my suspension.
This weekend I checked to see if they were serious. They are.
Here’s the weird part, I can still post cartoons on the Juanita Jean Facebook page but I cannot publish to my personal Facebook page, which kinda seems backwards to me.
And, by the way, I even posted it here and nobody sent hate mail.
The only bad part about this is that I’m going to Austin next Monday to entertain Glen on the filing deadline – the last day to file for election in Texas. I was going to post any last minute filers for statewide or multi-county races on Facebook that day so my friends around Texas could keep up and not wait until the next morning. Now I can’t do that. So, I will do it here and let them spread the word. It won’t mean diddle squat to you you people from foreign states, but, Honey, it won’t be the first time I’ve posted something that don’t mean diddle squat.
Okay, so that gets us to here.
I think this explains why Trump isn’t on Facebook. Everybody else just takes down things they don’t like. Facebook marches your butt out the door.
I’ve never been on Facebook; I like some measure of privacy. I hope they are as diligent with the TX GOP who have said in their published 2020 strategy that they would make up web sites and throw out fake information. You know they’ll be all over Facebook, YouTube etc.!
1Got nothing to say about Facebook. Especially nothing to say about Zuckerberg that is safe for work or children within a 5 mile radius.
2I posted your cartoon on my FB page as well. I got my hand slapped and told never do it again or I would be suspended from FB.
3It is time to admit that facebook is just another part of the right wing noise machine. Just look at zuckerberg’s dinner with alt right “thinkers” and his cozying up to demented donnies campaign, again.
4Compare your cartoon to the truly ugly and vile posts that the alt right and the demented donnie supporters post and are never removed in the name of “free speech”.
I will grant that sometimes one has to “sup with the devil” ( i.e. have hybrid but still need gas, try avoiding all koch brothers business products) but one must remember that the odds, proven by recent history, is that anything that goes on facebook is reviewed and channeled to the RNC and other alt right organizations.
So use of it, like other poison’s (i.e. botox=curare, pain killers=opioids addiction) should be limited as much as possible and acknowledged that use of it has become a bit of a necessity
Using facebook for any political activity to the left of david duke is simply surrendering all your data, contacts, likes etc to data crunchers such as Cambridge analytics to be used against you.
It would be like the allies using a german telecommunications company to plan for d-day.
Any page on facebook that supports anything even smacking of honesty and progressives should have a “shadow page” that is not on facebook where all communications etc are redirected to plus a notice on top of the page stating that facebook cannot be trusted for any reason and recommending that people stop using it.
Facebook has proven itself to be an untrustworthy platform supporting the alt right through its fake neutrality.
facebook is even less trustworthy than faux news, 4channel, or any of the other cesspools of dishonesty, misogny and racism.
Remember that facebooks roots lie in the “mission” to “rate” and comment on the appeal, and “availability” of ivy league women by a group of wealthy self entitled nabobs safely ensconced in their elite bubble confident of their immunity from any sexual harassment charges.
Now it shows that it hasn’t changed much.
Dump facebook. Stop giving away your information that will be given to those whose agenda is domination, pollution and misinformation.
Remember anything one says on facebook will be used against you.
Trump doesn’t need a Facebook account.
5He’s got Russians with Facebook accounts.
What Rick@5 said.
I have to say that Facebook is helpful to our local candidates, but I have nothing else for them.
6Interesting. Clay posts his toons on FB.
(https://www.facebook.com/clay.bennett.cartoons/ )
You might give him a buzz and ask if he was banned for posting that one?
423-757-6588
cbennett@timesfreepress.com
7As for your, er, ‘cartoon, well, talk about laugh – I nearly did!
8Is it possible they’re just not very smart and they thought you were promoting white nationalism? Yeah, let’s go with that.
9“Trump doesn’t need a Facebook account.
He’s got Russians with Facebook accounts.”
Not only that but he has zuckerberg and facebook organization working for him.
10Facebook tossed me out in late 2016, probably for chasing down rightwing trolls, but also because I couldn’t use my given name. Coupla stalkers, y’know, so I don’t use my real name anywhere. For Facebook, that wasn’t good enough. And now I don’t have to keep telling my relatives, “That’s racist, please take that down…”
11Boycotts work well.
I haven’t had a FB account since they wouldn’t allow me to delete or edit, or even hide, other people putting far too much of my personal info into their responses, ten or so years ago. (My relatives put everything in their responses except my Social Security number.) A whole lot of us quit, and FB changed their policies, but I have never gone back.
So ~
What other platform, that doesn’t censor liberal free speech, could we move to?
.
12I left FB because I found it to be harmful to my mental health. I was on twitter for a time but then responded to a tweet by Jeanine Pirro where she called Democrats “fools and dunces”. I responded by referring to her as “white trash”. I got banned and she didn’t.
13“Trump doesn’t need a Facebook account.
He’s got Russians with Facebook accounts.”
And IlhanOmarilhan Omar’s opponent’s call for Omar to be lynched remains up on Facebook (it has been confirmed NOT to violate “community standards”) although exactly the same text got her banned for life from Twitter. Now why would that be?
14At least you are not in good company:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/21/facebook-white-nationalists-ban-vdare-red-ice
You are suspended but the white nationalists are promoted. I have never had a facebook account and never will. I see the value but the trade-off is not worth it to me.
15I had a post removed from FB recently for “violation of community standards.” It was a ‘share,’ a feminist posting alerting women to badly behaved men. I responded on my ‘share’ with the following: “Men are frequently pigs.”
The entire ‘share’ was removed, but not the original. I shared again, only this time my response was “Men frequently exhibit porcine behavior.”
That stayed put. Evidently if your post drives them to a thesaurus, they panic.
16It’s probably been posted here before, but here is the email interchange that was released as part of discovery when Zuckerberg was sued over ownership of FB:
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks
I have a firm policy of never doing business with someone who calls me a “dumb fuck”. So I’ve refused to get an account, and have no regrets over it.
17BUT FB allows the misleading ads by Trump et.al. They need to stop this nonsense. FB allowing these false statements are part and parcel of us getting trumputin in the WH. It needs to stop NOW – like other forums.
18A friend got Facebook time out for posting a cartoon of an elephant in a Klan robe.
What I found interesting was that they were able to post a screen grab of the FB notification along with the original cartoon after their suspension was served.
If it were not the main way I am able to stay in touch with my family and friends scattered across the globe, I’d ditch it in a New York minute.
Kinda like Amazon.
I hate it but I depend on it.
God help us all.
19I know I repeat phrases like right wing alternate reality infrastructure. And it’s probably getting old.
20But so is the damage done to our democracy, society, and sanity.
When I’ve talked about freedom of speech being our greatest strength and Increasingly weaponized against us, I was always talking about right wing media, and manipulation of social media by bad actors.
See, this joint is the closest I get to social media.
This post and these comments are Illuminating.
Embarrassingly so.
People decide where to go for their reality based on Facebook.
And it’s purty free to point folks in whatever direction they please.
And you folks have pointed out the problem with this scenario.
Thank you for this lesson.