Puritanical Facebook Censors Parody Publication, Makes Appeal Process A Threat
from the innocent-lambs dept
I have no idea why, but there seems to be a sudden influx of stories concerning Facebook patrolling its site and taking down content over rather puritanical standards of offense and vulgarity. The most recent examples of this have concerned a couple of pieces of artwork that the Facebook Decency Office deemed to be to risque, despite the fact that neither of the art pieces could reasonably be described as particularly pornographic. The most recent example of this kind of censorious brigade is less to do with scary, scary sex, and more to do with parody content that some might find vulgar.
It appears Viz, an outfit that is essentially an old-timey British take on The Onion, has had its Facebook page seized with little to no explanation.
The almost 40-year-old Viz, a parody of titles like Beano but with frequently risque language and humour, tweeted that Facebook has blocked its page. Ian Westwood, group managing director at parent Dennis Publishing, said that Facebook has not said what content violated its content rules.Perhaps more strangely, while Facebook has informed Viz that it can appeal the unilateral blocking of its Facebook page, a loss in that appeal would result in a perma-ban.
“The question is what is, and isn’t acceptable to Facebook,” he said. “We have had that Facebook page for five years. We have had correspondence with them before about stuff they haven’t liked and we’ve taken it down. This time they have just blocked the page and won’t tell us what we’ve violated. We can appeal, but we don’t know what we would be appealing about, we put up a significant number of posts from the print brand to social media each day.”
The message from Facebook warned that if the publisher makes an unsuccessful appeal to have the page reinstated, it could face being permanently deleted.Now, it should be noted that Viz uses language and subject matters that could certainly be considered much more crass compared with other parody outfits such as The Onion. It should also be noted that Viz is hilarious as well as useful in pointing out the absurdity of every day news and news publications. That's how parody works, after all. In fact, the publication has been tweeting out to members, as well as to Facebook, its concept work for updating its Facebook page, on which it has changed most of the imagery to puppies and kittens to try to appease the Facebook prude-patrol. This has had the effect of alerting those following Viz that Facebook has taken the page down, resulting in the appropriate backlash.
The idea that a social media site like Facebook would take down this kind of parody, ostensibly on the grounds of vulgarity, is silly in and of itself. It will, of course, only result in people pointing out just how much other vulgar content exists on the site and how haphazard the site appears to be in this kind of policing. But to do all of this without bothering to inform the victim of why the takedown has occurred and to then use the appeals process as a threat of perma-ban? C'mon.
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Filed Under: censorship, parody, satire, takedowns, uk, viz
Companies: facebook, viz
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The legions of loony have done it again.
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If only facebook wasn't necessary to access the internet. I see a bright future.
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Re:
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ALL HAIL......
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The beginning of the end
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Re: The beginning of the end
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“The question is what is, and isn’t acceptable to Facebook"
I don't suppose they can shut you down for some of the comments your readers leave. OTOH, you might host a comment section yourself and just leave a link to the main page or latest entry.
I don't get FaceBook. No, really. If I want my (real) friends to know something, I'll see them, tell them, call them, write them (in Snail Mail cursive!) or email them. WTH is the big deal w/FB except for collecting a large count of "Friends" (c, TM, patent, RIAA patent because of the the phonemes, and MPAA because of the TV show) that you don't even know.
If I wanted a large number of friends, I'd just inflate my Page View counter. (See the URL embedded in my name above. I just can't figure out why it's still sitting at 0 though.)
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Re: “The question is what is, and isn’t acceptable to Facebook"
Fnaa Fnaa.
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Re: Re: “The question is what is, and isn’t acceptable to Facebook"
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Viz vs The Onion
Well - a bit of fact checking would have helped here because
1. Viz predates the Onion by about 8 years
2. Viz is rather different from The Onion. It is realy more an adult version of a children's comic in the tradition of the Beano. It majors on innuendo and tends not to include much political satire.
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Re: Viz vs The Onion
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Re: abuse of power and authority
when when enough power is obtained to exert control over others, it always happens. abuse of power appears to be tied directly to the amount of power held by an entity of group of entities.
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Because, as at least one commenter has pointed out,
1) more & more websites are outsourcing their comment sections to FB, so without an FB account, you're silenced.
2) More importantly, organisations you may need to interact with online use a FB page instead of running their own website.
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It's slightly less convenient, but "slightly less convenient" is a far cry from "difficult".
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thats why he has no friends
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power and authority
The safe harbour provision of the dmca allowed entities like this to fill the demand for hosting, and content aggregation- rather than entities and efforts that focused on helping people to self host, and aggregate. For all the good that safe harbour did, people seam to miss this aspect of it.
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Facebook
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black lives matter vs all lives matter
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A Facebook page would also leave me susceptable to an employer's scrutiny.
To date news comes in to assure me that was an unregrettable decision.
I thought that once employers were demanding Facebook passwords, and everyone kept a whitewashed employer-friendly account that people would stop taking Facebook seriously. oh, that's the blog my mother gets to read.
I suppose that one could make a social media site that sustains a more ethical set of rules and will try to provide restricted Facebook content to its members.
But such a provider would have to expect litigation from big F.
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Commercial sites are commercial
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Squat or Own
...When you build on somebody else's property.
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It's funny because...
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Why do people still use Facebook?
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Re: Why do people still use Facebook?
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Is anything on Viz worse than that?
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Perhaps it's time
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http://i41.tinypic.com/ev2ih4.jpg
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