Yes, their automated system is very flawed and inconsistent. We’ve had the same issue with some content being deleted and then not others.
I once got a temporary ban on FB for sharing a GIF that was allegedly explicit. It was one of FB’s own GIFs and the man had his hand resting in his lap - the algorithm interpreted his little finger as exposed genitals 😂🤦🏻♀️
Other people had used the same GIF with no issue. The FB automated checking system really is just rubbish.
I’m sure there is a small % of deletions that are due to human reports but in my experience they are very much a tiny minority. If you report something it’s not reviewed by human eyes, it’s an automated check. And frequently no action is taken, even for clear and obvious breaches of community standards. I’m not saying never, but it’s surprisingly difficult to get posts deleted that aren’t picked up by FB’s own bots.
We know for certain that a large number of the deletions have been picked up by the algorithm as we used our access to get them individually checked. Without being too outing, our FB groups are hobby/business related - we have a mainstream group (which is the large one) and then another group dedicated to more provocative/adult themed items. The mainstream group is very uncontroversial and “safe” - but we’ve had WAY more random deletions in there than in the more risqué group! Random deletions can really affect our members’ businesses so historically we’ve spoken directly to FB employees and asked for a manual check. On every occasion the deletion has been due to an algorithm.
An example of one deletion was the word “knob” - used very clearly and in context about drawers. Nope. The post removed and a warning issued. Other people were able to post about drawer knobs. Bonkers 🤦🏻♀️
Over the years we’ve had periods where certain groups of people have mounted sabotage campaigns (ex-members who were removed for being abusive to others - it’s a very long story lol). They really were out to try and cause havoc - but they weren’t successful in getting posts removed despite their best efforts.
I appreciate all of this is anecdotal but we’ve really dug deep into the subject of post deletions and spoken repeatedly to our contacts at FB about the subject. I see lots of people venting on FB in other groups about malicious people reporting their posts but in the vast majority of cases, it’s very clear than it’s just the FB algorithm and nothing more. But people are intent on believing they’re being reported when that really isn’t the case. The random and inconsistent nature of FB’s algorithms doesn’t help. Posts that were absolutely fine sometimes randomly get picked up months or even years later!
The FB team that we talked to openly acknowledged that the algorithm wasn’t great and needed work.
Having access to actual humans to talk to made a very big difference for us. FB is particularly poor in terms of customer service and as a norm, most people only get AI-generated responses. It’s very difficult to bypass this and get through to an actual real human unless you have some kind of access like we were given. The difference in responses was like night and day.