The more and more racist comments are being allowed to stand on FB

[JimandPam]

I am still a pretty frequent user of FB and find it useful for keeping in touch with overseas family and also part of hobby groups/kids days out ideas etc

I've always been a part of my local community Facebook and whilst most of the time comments/posts are in good faith, I've noticed more and more vile posts that are either racist or homophobic. I always report them using the appropriate tools

However, over the last 6 months I've noticed these comments are allowed to stand and I don't understand why

Two recent examples:
A community post about bad driving in a notorious spot in our town. I reported two comments

1. X Town used to be nice before all of Africa moved in
2. Never had this problem when they used to be on jam jars

After taking 30 days to review I've been told that neither of these comments break their community guidelines. What?? I've reopened them and added comments but I'm finding this more and more that my reporting is not being upheld

I know the simple answer is to use FB less but I'm seeing this all over SM where hateful comments are reported but not taken down.

AIBU to think the above should have simply been removed on reporting them or am I going mad?

Tbh I’m amazed the transphobic comments on here are allowed to stand.

Don't click on the adds featuring black or mixed race people if you find that bad. I clicked on one for a restaurant and all the comments were along the lines of "shame this isn't available in England" or "is this for your African restaurants?" this was a British restaurant.. add just had a black child in it.

Whoever could have guessed these social media/tech bros aren't the moral guardians we all thought they were...
They're in it for the money, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care about anything but money and power. If you keep feeding into these unethical platforms, you're part of the problem.

Was 'ethical' a typo in your op or the FB post? If it was the FB post perhaps that's why it wasn't removed?

I would leave the area. Or Facebook, or both.
Imagine knowing that all these people who are pretending to be upstanding citizens in the local community are happy to spout such racist shite for all to see. There's nothing you can do sadly but report and I'd want to move to a less racist town.

Sadly, I think racists are everywhere.

They aren’t. Report them and MN will delete.

Unless you’re talking about posts that aren’t transphobic and simply say something you don’t like? That makes you a big part of why we’re where we are now.

In what way do you think it’s ’telling’? I think perhaps you need to read through all the replies on here!

Apology accepted.

Sadly they are everywhere!

As others said, “freedom of speech”. It’s not just SM but the media in general. Today there was an article in the Daily Mail about an ex RAF base increasing asylum seeker numbers. A comment by one villager said, “send them back”.

@PepsiPepsiPepsi I hate that on adverts. It's just so depressing and awful if people really are actually that racist.
I often wonder how much of it is people trying to sound "hard" or do they actually believe what they are saying.

I live in an I'm- not- racist- but area. Fb reflects this. Dh has learned that if you call racists cunts, or a bit thick, you get banned, but the racist isfree to post another day.

More worrying is the rise of racism among young people. Ds regularly gets himself in arguments in school. A few of his friends are trump/ musk supporters. We're going backwards.

Unless it’s the middle of the night 😂.

Not sure how I feel about this. There is certainly less censorship now, and it's awful to see some of the stuff people post. But... having stronger censorship doesn't seem to have done anything to curb racism or homophobia. It may have been nice that we saw less of it, but we've lurched massively to the right now and a lot of people seem very surprised, possibly because they were only seeing a carefully curated selection of people's thoughts rather than their 'real' opinions. It also feeds into the Trump/Reform narrative that people are being oppressed and aren't being listened to, so maybe it's worth being able to see what people are actually thinking. I imagine most of us would immediately denounce anyone who shared this sort of content, and this may turn out to be a better form of censorship. After all, until the advent of social media, public opinion was key to influencing how people behaved. Someone may feel more likely to realise the error of their thinking if their friends, family, employers etc notice what they've written and ostracise them (or even just calmly discuss it with them) than if Facebook just deletes it. I also personally feel a bit uncomfortable about putting a few unelected billionaires in charge of deciding what we're allowed to see...

I saw that article. The number of recently arrived male migrants in a small rural village is set to outnumber the total village population. Many of the villagers provided their account of the men hanging around in large groups drinking alcohol, defecating in lanes, staring at children and mums in the playground and following them in. Some are concerned for the safety of their female relatives given the attitudes to women inherent in their cultures. Would you be happy about this happening to your home town and if so, why? I’m genuinely interested.

Plenty of men who are white do that in our local towns, hanging out drinking alcohol.
Colour of their skin, the insinuations about "their culture" means they'll surely be up to no good...
it's irrelevant.
It's demonising and spreading hate and fear about entire groups.
Whether it's about race, gay people, men etc, whatever bigotry it is, it always hides behind "reasonable concerns" and "protect women and children" (you never usually hear cries to help the women or children if they're coming over in boats too though?)

Very true, poor Nightwatch unpaid volunteers, really felt for them the past week or so

I haven’t seen huge groups of Englishmen drinking in country lanes and defecating. Or following mums and kids into playgrounds. I could go on. This isn’t typical behaviour in the U.K. Which towns are you thinking of?

Agree. When my friends partner died, scammers set up a fake FB account cloning his and posted a gofundme to raise money fur her funeral
Quite a few people reported to FB who said there was nothing wrong with the profile and no rules broken despite people being scammed out of money

@MakeYourOwnMusicStartYourOwnDance

What is your personal interest in defending the behaviours of the men in that article?

I've stopped going on Twitter because it's a vile cesspit of racism but Facebook is getting bad too. Someone commented that all Leeds taxi drivers are pedophiles and grooming gang members (yes you've guessed it, many taxi drivers here are Muslim). I reported the comment and Facebook said it didn't break their talk guidelines!!! Seriously?? It's ok to publicly say all Leeds taxi drivers are pedophiles because they happen to be Muslim? I'd like to know what the hell does break their rules.
I've seen endless similar comments. I'm absolutely sick of it. I can only imagine the dreadful psychological impact this has on people from the groups being targeted.

That’s what I said - the adverts featuring mixed couples have the most toxic of responses. Especially when the woman is white / the man black.

I find it incredible how many young educated people are in favour of curbing immigration. They seem to feel they want to preserve Britishness! Absolutely absurd.
the phrase “protect … at all costs” is now everywhere, applied to Britain. They are so right wing it’s astonishing.

Yes I've seen the same. It makes me feel scared actually, as someone who has an Asian husband. To think that people might hate us or feel anger about out relationship is very disturbing.

Not defending it and I live in an area where this does happen and we have one of the highest numbers of knife crime in England. I don’t blame PoC or other nationalities for antisocial behaviour or crime en masse.