Facebook Fails To Remove Child Abuse Posts For Over A Year

in facebook •  7 years ago 

It's likely that you or someone you know might have seen the Facebook error message at some point or another, notifying you that your page has been suspended for a certain period of time over posting inappropriate content.

There have been many individuals who have had their accounts suspended or even closed permanently without warning, regarding issues relating to the content that was posted under their account. In a crackdown that to many has been viewed as a wave of censorship , it's surprising to hear whenever Facebook might have any sort of a difficult time in removing any truly concerning posts from its platform.

I have seen a variety of friends have their pages promptly suspended on Facebook after they posted controversial status updates or memes, and they were reported by someone in the community. The accounts would usually be back to normal within a short amount of time. Whenever Facebook has taken to suspending or purging what it deems to be controversial accounts, it has always seemed to carry out the task in a swift manner.

Though, not always. . .


In some unfortunate circumstances, it turns out that Facebook allegedly permitted abusive content involving children to remain posted to its platform for over a year. According to court documents from India, the company neglected to remove highly sensitive content that allegedly included rape videos. There were also allegations that one Facebook page was being used to orchestrate a child sex ring.

The Supreme Court in India has ordered Facebook to work aggressively with the government in overhauling its approach in removing this sort of content when it arises. One of the ways that they hope to do that is by increasing the list of keywords that they look for.

The company has allegedly responded to the claims and said that it took the appropriate action in all circumstances where there might have been troublesome content posted. However, one user claims to have taken a screenshot of a notification from the site saying that after it had reviewed the content in-question, that it hadn't violated any community standards. Allegedly, it wasn't until the site was asked to do so by the court that they finally made the move to get rid of the posts.

There have been allegations for years regarding Facebook's purging of controversial content from its platform, and many activists saying they've been wrongfully targeted by the injustice. Not only political voices, but a variety of other random meme pages have also been removed. All the while, child abuse videos allegedly remain up for over a year? It's clear that there isn't much efficiency to their 'clean-up' approach.

Pics:
Reuters/Thomas White via International Business Times AU
via Vocativ

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/03/facebook-allowed-child-abuse-posts-stay-online-year-indian-court-hears
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/meme-pages-revolt-against-facebook/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaheilweil1/2017/07/18/facebook-removes-only-a-fraction-of-hate-groups-flagged-by-activists/#2522967c2711
https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-rohingya-activists-say-facebook-silences-them

Related Posts:

The 'Facebook Effect' On How We Manage Personal Relationships

https://steemit.com/psychology/@doitvoluntarily/the-facebook-effect-on-how-we-manage-personal-relationships

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What's going to happen when governments start coming after Steemit to remove posts?

The site may be censorship-resistant but I rather doubt that it's censorship-proof.

Funny you mention that. The thought and question crossed my mind this morning. I know blockchain works a bit differently than a website but I don't know much more than that. Would be great to have that explained. @preparedwombat I am glad you posted this question.

I've been wondering the same thing after I saw some porn posts.
(nothing wrong with those ones IMHO, if your into that, but it did raise the question in my mind)

I wondered "what if" someone posted 'bad' images? (who defines that?)

how do they get removed from the blockchain?

Can they be removed?

Is there a discussion paper on this sort of issue?
.
.
.

BTW I'm not a "porn supporter" nor am I "anti-porn", time & place & all that.
There are many web pages that have free content, I just wonder about it's value-add on steem.

Well, there's the nsfw tag available for images that may be offensive to some, while not being illegal.

To be quite frank @doitvoluntarily facebook is pretty much useless at removing any inappropriate content and are equally inefficient at handling reported accounts too. In fact i often wonder why they even bother offering the 'report' function.

Thanks for sharing

@doitvoluntarily, yes exactly you are right that there are so many errors and fake things on Facebook, and it fails to overcome on these problems. Child abuse posts are also very serious issue but it's managemnt fail to remove it. Thanks for sharing such article.

I, for one, welcome our facebook prisoners to Steemit :)

Thank you.

Yes they do but the sex trade account involving teens are still live on facebook shame.

Great post. Thanks for sharing

Great post. Thank for sharing @doitvoluntarily

Really This Is Facebook Helpfull Tips.

Facebook is guilty of a number of things. I was part of a class action suit against them for using my photo without my permission years ago. I might have won $5.

Good post I follow you

The facebook ceo and leaders are all part of the same group of elitists that are involved in the hollywood sex scandals unfolding now. This has been a huge part of their religion for at least hundreds of years.

F-c-book should just tell the govern-cements, sorry, can't be done.
It is not possible to monitor any percentage of the traffic on f-c-book.

I doubt it is even possible to have a human look at all of the flagged things.

So, either f-c-book and the govern-cements are idiots (which they certainly portray themselves to be) or f-c-book and govern-cements are using all of this as a smokescreen to control content. To censor what they don't want to be seen.

As the people on top are pedos who are trying to normalize and make legal pedophilia, then what f-c-book is doing makes perfect sense. To them, there is nothing wrong with the kiddy porn, and everything wrong with trying to give the govern-cement a black eye pointing out all the inconsistencies in Lost Vegas and Charlottestown.

according to their own standards, the content is in violation so its removal shouldn't have anything to do with the government.

good post

Been gone from facebook over a year now. I do not miss it! So much wrong with that place!

Never had bookface, and never will they are so shady there.

Problems with Facebook goes beyond this, and that's why I stopped using it almost for 100% - I kept just my messenger, which I rarely check anyway.
Lastly, there have been problems with neo nazi group in our country. They became very popular among the youth at their facebook. Even though they've been posting hateful comments on Facebook and a lot of the others have been trying to report it - Facebook ignore it for a looong time.

I seem to get jerked around by Facebook quite a bit. Just recently I got banned 3 times in a row from posting in groups. First I was banned for 1 week, after that ban ended, I got banned for another 2 weeks and then another 2 weeks after that. They have come down harder on me since I have started to share Steemit posts on Facebook. I guess Steemit is more offensive than child pornography.

Why I don't use F book! Politics! 🐓🐓

Say "No!" to Facebook by not using it. I don't use it because surveillance capitalism, and it's bad for my brain. In 50 years, only famous people will have social media profiles, and they'll be called websites again. By then all of us will have learned to stick to writing in our diaries.