Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/27/that-time-my-husband-reported.html
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I’m thinking the wink wink comment you added about SF curators knowing their audience (gay men) didn’t help. That added the sexualized context to the otherwise art historical image. Had you framed it otherwise, there might have been a better chance of it not being interpreted that way.
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You are very optimistic about the level of nuance that FB applies in their moderation effort.
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As @DukeTrout notes, you’re imputing an undeserved level of cogitation to overworked corporate drones disincentived to do anything but rapidly execute the instructions in fifteen minutes of training on an iPad written by Dogbert Consulting.
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Sláinte. 
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Moderation becomes much easier in a decentralised, federated platform. Anyone can post anything, but community standards become more localised by virtue of being instances of a larger system.
In any scenario, though, the focus has to shift from problematic individual comments to problematic individual users and/or accounts, and there needs to be investment in both a moderation system (user-facing and back-end) and moderators who can identify them. Facebook and Twitter have shown no serious inclination to even attempt this, and instead we have situations like the one described in the article.
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Could it be,maybe, that economies of scale just dont apply when it comes to packaging community speech into corporate speech?
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Indeed. If sufficiently decentralized, you could just do it with block lists that could be maintained by unaffiliated individuals. Anyone can post anything they want on Thur own sites, but you can opt to trust someone’s judgment about blocking, and apply a curated list of people whose posts you won’t see and who can’t comment on your public posts. That way, everyone could decide on their own community standards, without any intervention from a central authority.
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It would be an improvement, even if there are some wrinkles to iron out (see Wil Wheaton’s experience on Mastadon). You want an instance that allows porn dongs but not artistic dongs? Great. You want an instance that allows artistic dongs but not porn ones? Go for it. Both kinds of dongs? No dongs at all? It’s all possible depending on the standards you and your community want for your instance.
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Meh, not really. They leave reported posts up all the time. And her added caption really does unnecessarily sexualize the image, in a subtle but clear way that targets gay men, adding nothing to the art historical context that it was supposedly posted for to begin with.
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You’re not wrong about the comment at all. But I’m not sure that this:
speaks to FB moderation’s level of sophistication or nuance. I don’t go anywhere near FB, but from what I hear from those who do, it’s worse than youtube, and I can say from direct experience that youtube moderation is a shitshow.
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And the cry goes out to “Free Willy”
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It’s bordering on malpractice to tease the article with “my husband informed on me to the Facestapo” and then never bring it up again.
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It’s ironic that this chaste photo would be censored as “not artistic” in a discussion about Rodin, whose work makes Fuck Truck 6 look prudish (not a criticism).
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Yes I wondered too – was the husband in on it, to test the moderation policy, or was he really upset his wife was posting pictures of someone else’s junk?
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Before I deleted my account (not just the app on my phone, my actual account), I reported multiple posts and comments that were blatantly racist, homophobic, anti semitic, misogynistic etc, and/or directly called for violence or state sponsored oppression in one form or another. Those reports all went the same way, with FB giving a mealy mouthed reaponse saying the posts or comments didn’t violate their policies. So I have direct knowledge of reported posts going undeleted. Maybe they’re more strict about the sexy stuff. Either way, the moral of the story is, delete your fucking accounts, the world will be better for it.
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