There are rules and then there are rules

On Facebook, I’m one of the co-moderators for a private group.  It’s essentially a private group that shares memories “Do you remember when?” and then there’s the occasional joke that’s posted just to keep momentum going.  It’s nice to be able to log in and see that there’s something new.

A little while ago, one of the members posted something that he thought was funny.

I won’t get into details but I found it offensive when I discovered it both in the group and on their personal timeline.

It turns out that one of the members of the group had seen it before me and had reported it to Facebook as opposing its own rules about Community Standards.

As moderators, given the content, there was no surprise when we received a message from Facebook (probably automatically generated because that someone had reported it) indicating that the post had been reported and outlined two or three actions that we needed to take to ensure that it didn’t happen again.

We took the action and, to be honest, I unfriended the individual simply because I didn’t want to have any association with someone who would post something like that.

Life in the group goes on and I think we all learned a bit from the incident.

In the past few days, I’ve read two or three articles referring to this piece.

Donald Trump Can Post Hate Speech To Facebook, But You Can’t

There’s so many things wrong, and potentially wrong here.

Like most things, it would be good to fact check everything that’s reported here.  It’s also important to take a look at the comments at the bottom to realize that we live in a pretty unique world.  It’s also a reminder that it’s important to be able to differentiate between things that are unique like reference to American rights.

But the rules don’t necessarily apply to everyone.  Check this out.

Facebook Cracks Down On Hate Speech In Germany

It’s a whole digital literacy lesson.

But, there are some good things in the first article. They are typically links to resources like Facebook’s Community Standards.

For me, this whole situation is worrisome.  First, it’s disconcerting that people can make statements like this.  Secondly, it’s disconcerting that students can read this and see it as appropriate behaviour.  Thirdly, there are rules that apply to some and not to others.

Remember the litmus test about your grandmother reading things that you post?

I guess that test must not apply to everyone.