• Re: Arbitrary And Capricious Social Media Bans

    From Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOlivei@3:633/280.2 to All on Friday, August 22, 2025 07:32:38
    On Sun, 10 Aug 2025 01:45:41 -0000 (UTC), I wrote:

    This item ... reports on people who have had their accounts on
    Instagram or Facebook (both owned by parent company Meta) suspended
    or banned for unknown reasons.

    The saga continues, with more account blocks that seem just as
    arbitrary as those that have gone before <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwi-users-face-facebook-instagram-bans-in-metas-ai-enforcement-crackdown/DSZB2Q7IB5AONCLKIUWYOIKUGM/>.

    One thing I find sardonically funny is one suffering user is quoted
    as saying “they need a better customer support system”. Remember, if
    you are not paying for the service, then you are not the customer:
    you are the product.

    I have to amend that. A couple of the users mentioned in the latest
    article were in fact paying money for their accounts. But it seems
    their service was no better than that meted out to non-paying users.

    However, it’s clear the social media sites are trying to offer a
    service that is as profitable for themselves as possible. That means
    keeping costs down to a minimum. Which means heavy use of automatic
    systems, with as little human involvement as possible. So not only are
    the bans automatic, but even the appeals lodged by users against those
    bans are also handled automatically for the most part.

    Human intervention is being reserved only for the most important
    cases. And the most important cases are the ones that are likely to
    cause the most PR damage to the company.

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