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?

This is the thing people miss. When you are in one of the, or multiple of the groups targeted it’s just a non-step hate fest everytime you try to use a platform.

This is why I am happy for platforms such as BlueSky. We need more options. The wild west for people who want to see misogyny and racism everywhere they look. And then a better moderated platform for those who just want civilised discourse without the bigotry, edgelords and hate.

Saying we don’t want to hear somebody’s bigotry is not calling for their religious beliefs to be censored. I could question why non religious people have to have others religious beliefs imposed on us.

Bluesky exists

Absolutely agree, I have reported probably hundreds of comments over the past year that are absolutely disgusting and not one has ‘gone against community standards’ 🙄
One in particular was a really horrendous comment about someone’s disability but yet was allowed to remain.
I have had 3 temporary bans,however, for things like telling someone to ‘get a life’ when they kept commenting nasty replies on a comment I had put up or the best yet when someone called me a really nasty name and I repeated it asking why they felt that was ok to put. Their comment stayed and I got a ban….

yes the views are vile.

But who do you suggest gets to control what is acceptable speech and what isn't acceptable speech?

How do we draw the line about what people can and can't say?

JimandPam

Could it be that you don't understand what the term actually means? You are throwing the R word around and trivialising it?
You are a virtue signaller that is fooling nobody. You probably very deliberately do not live the life those posters live and are as remote and ignorant on the subject as can be. May be you are not but every virtue signaller like this I've known is as distant by choice from other races as humanely unlikely possible these days.

What is a “virtue signaller”?

As for mysoginy - sadly often true now but completely predictable if you allow people to openly practice misoginy and behaviours abusive towards women for religious and cultural reasons, then the floodgate is open for all.

Why are you acting like it's an impossible task when it's already happening? The majority of online spaces do not allow racism, sexism, homophobia etc. Look at Mumsnet, for example, there are talk guidelines and there are moderators. You are allowed to write things such as "I'm concerned about immigration levels". You are not allowed to say "I hate immigration because the country is filling up with blacks, Muslims, Asians, Jews etc and i can't stand these groups because they're all criminals and pedophiles". If you do say this, your comment will be deleted, rightly so.
Think about the rules and standards that exist in schools and work places. You are not allowed to discriminate against a pupil or colleague because they're female or black or Muslim. You're not allowed to make racist statements about someone, you're not allowed to make statements against a whole group of people based on their religion.
It's really not rocket science.

Facebook changed their moderation policies following Trump's victory to be more like X. There was a lot of this shit before, but it'll be even wors now (or better, I guess, if you think lots of racism and misogyny is symbolic of a healthy society founded on free speech).

I just stopped using it- even our town group was full of nastiness, and a lot of the members didn't live here anymore but didn't feel anything should change from how it was 50 or 60 years ago when they were small children.

I can understand that people have concerns about immigration, or religious objections to gay marriage. Fine. But why people feel the need to throw repulsive abuse around because there's a black person in an advert is completely beyond me and I just don't see that it adds anything to the human experience.

Yes, definitely, I was thinking the same thing just yesterday.

I was in a knitting group. Over the last few days, it started to be (suspiciously in my opinion) flooded with pictures of golliwogs people had knitted, with loads of comments saying “oh how lovely, you never see gollies these days”.
I commented very politely to share the fact that golliwogs are widely considered a racist caricature and suggested that they weren’t the best toy to give away to children (what the group was for). I didn’t call anyone racist, I assumed good intentions and shared my point of view. Lots of people agreed with me and thanked me for my post.

By the next day, my comment and all others agreeing with me had been deleted. More golliwog dolls had been shared (with accompanying positive comments) along with a shouty message from the moderator along the lines of “Stop reporting the gollie dolls, they’re fine, deal with it or leave.”

So I left. I thought it was disgusting. There are thousands of people in that group. I can’t put my finger on what was going on with these dolls popping up all of a sudden and being so viciously defended, but it didn’t smell right at all.

Such as what?

This is interesting and coincides with when I've seen a push back on comments being deleted

*I commented very politely to share the fact that golliwogs are widely considered a racist caricature and suggested that they weren’t the best toy to give away to children (what the group was for). I didn’t call anyone racist, I assumed good intentions and shared my point of view. Lots of people agreed with me and thanked me for my post.

By the next day, my comment and all others agreeing with me had been deleted*

Absolute madness that your very polite comment pointing this out was deleted but the comments I've highlighted are allowed to stand

I wonder if every time someone posted something openly racist, someone replied saying “I think you look like a paedophile” if that would have any effect? Free speech innit.

... I'm not quite sure where to begin with this? You think I don't understand what the term 'racist' means and may have misunderstood the comments? Could you tell me how you would interpret the examples I have posted?

As for virtue signalling: I think you may have a case if I was asking if the comments were racist with fluttering eyes. I'm not. I'm asking if the FB policy to let them stand and that they don't break any community standards seems fair and appropriate.

I thought the fact the comments were racist was pretty bloody obvious to be honest

Oh dear OP, you seem to have attracted a Stupid

@Fencehedge Either that or goady. Can't work out which

I've read similar before. I think they're trying to say that people are racist for a reason and you don't live their lives so can't understand why.

I’ve never had a Facebook report upheld. Waste of time.

It could be argued saying gollie dolls are Ok is a hate crime, promoting racial caricatures and division. I’d report the facebook page to the police and see what transpires.

I won’t be on any Meta platform anymore. There are alternatives like BlueSky if you want to still be on social media.

It sounds like the person who set up the Facebook group and who moderates it believes 'gollies' are not racist and may have an agenda which they're pushing. The people who run Facebook groups have a lot of power. When you report a post on a group you are reporting it to the group admin not to Facebook directly. I think that's always been the case. That's why people who think 'gollies' are racist have had their posts deleted. I assume you can report groups to Facebook and you could try that but once it's clear a group has an agenda you might just want to find a different group.

Where have I defended the behaviour of the men in the article? I've done no such thing, and nor would I.
I meant the whole demonisation of immigrants/ people who aren't white as a group , not these individuals and if you don't or can't understand that there's nothing else really to say to you.

Racist comments are being allowed to stand on FB for the same reason Mark Zuckerberg gave $ 1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee — to curry favor with the current President of the United States.

People are scared and angry about how much the UK has changed. Not that it's right, and I'm certainly not excusing any behaviours but that's what I think reading statuses

Earlier this week I was in my local shopping mall. All the benches inside were taken by gangs of the migrants coming from the local hotels. People comment about them, especially on social media local pages

I don't know where or how this will end up but I suspect it'll get much worse and the right will rise more so than it is now.