So because Facebook has, for some reason, decided that it’s not going to show me my friends’ posts anymore, just the stuff they’ve liked or commented on, I had the joy of an image of a dead baby in a gutter popping up on my feed the other day. It had some caption that if you didn’t comment ‘amen’ you’d get 7 years back luck. So people had commented on it, because although the rational part of our thinking tells us that there is no way we could actually get 7 years bad luck from not commenting on a Facebook post, no one wants to tempt fate that’s human nature.
It turns out though, that a number of people were offended by the image and reported it and so did I, because whether the image is real or not I don’t think it was appropriate in that context. Maybe, just maybe in a hard hitting journalistic news story where babies were being slaughtered in the gutter (and with an appropriate warning of upsetting or disturbing images) this kind of thing is acceptable, but not being exploited by some social media junkie just to get his attention fix for the day.
So I did this little thing that you can do on Facebook where you report an image and wait to hear back and like all the other people who had reported it I got the following response…
...thanks for letting us know about the photo you reported....As of now it hasn't been removed because we found that it doesn't go against the Facebook Community Standards...blah blah blah!
I’ve had a quick look through the ‘Community Standards’ and aside from the fact that I actually have a life, I can’t really be bothered to go back to them and make a case as to why I think that exploiting the image of a dead baby and manipulating and threatening people with ‘bad luck’ should contravene those standards. This was not a post to raise awareness, this was a post of fear and manipulation by an attention seeking individual endorsed by Facebook to continue to do so.
So let me just leave you with this thought, Facebook is a great resource for connecting with people, but when it gets to the point that it thinks it’s ok for people to post disturbing and upsetting images for personal propaganda and cares little for it’s users sensibilities…then maybe it’s time to find another social media platform!
It turns out though, that a number of people were offended by the image and reported it and so did I, because whether the image is real or not I don’t think it was appropriate in that context. Maybe, just maybe in a hard hitting journalistic news story where babies were being slaughtered in the gutter (and with an appropriate warning of upsetting or disturbing images) this kind of thing is acceptable, but not being exploited by some social media junkie just to get his attention fix for the day.
So I did this little thing that you can do on Facebook where you report an image and wait to hear back and like all the other people who had reported it I got the following response…
...thanks for letting us know about the photo you reported....As of now it hasn't been removed because we found that it doesn't go against the Facebook Community Standards...blah blah blah!
I’ve had a quick look through the ‘Community Standards’ and aside from the fact that I actually have a life, I can’t really be bothered to go back to them and make a case as to why I think that exploiting the image of a dead baby and manipulating and threatening people with ‘bad luck’ should contravene those standards. This was not a post to raise awareness, this was a post of fear and manipulation by an attention seeking individual endorsed by Facebook to continue to do so.
So let me just leave you with this thought, Facebook is a great resource for connecting with people, but when it gets to the point that it thinks it’s ok for people to post disturbing and upsetting images for personal propaganda and cares little for it’s users sensibilities…then maybe it’s time to find another social media platform!