Facebook Bans People For Simply Saying Abortion Pills Exist

from the with-friends-like-these... dept

On the one hand, content moderation at the scale modern social media companies operate at is an impossible nightmare. Companies are always going to lack the staff and resources to do it well (raising questions about the dangers of automation at scale), and they’re always going to screw things up for reasons well discussed.

At the same time, there’s Facebook. A company whose executive leadership team often compounds these challenges by making the worst and most idiotic decisions possible at any particular moment.

Case in point: the company appears to have consciously embraced the policy of banning Facebook and Instagram users for saying they might mail abortion pills in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning Roe:

To corroborate this activity, on Friday a Motherboard reporter attempted to post the phrase “abortion pills can be mailed” on Facebook using a burner account. The post was flagged within seconds as violating the site’s community standards, specifically the rules against buying, selling, or exchanging medical or non-medical drugs. The reporter was given the option to “disagree” with the decision or “agree” with it. After they chose “disagree,” the post was removed. 

Again, we’re not just talking about blocking websites that actually mail abortion pills. Reporters at Vice’s Motherboard found that even publicly acknowledging that abortion pills exist and could be mailed resulted in an account ban:

Other reporters have confirmed the changes. Facebook refuses to reverse the bans or even respond to reporter inquiries into the policy, which are consciously bad choices, not content moderation at scale problems.

The company’s systems claim that even mentioning that these pills exist violates its community standards related to “restricted goods and services.” Yet when other reporters made similar posts promising to mail marijuana or guns, there were no restrictions:

The Facebook account was immediately put on a “warning” status for the post, which Facebook said violated its standards on “guns, animals and other regulated goods.”

Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation. Marijuana is illegal under federal law and it is illegal to send it through the mail.

Activist groups like Fight For the Future were decidedly unimpressed, saying the policy foretold uglier things to come as the far right continues to push its court-enabled advantage:

Facebook’s censorship of critical reproductive healthcare information and advocacy should be a massive, code-red warning to Democrats who want to revise or repeal Section 230. In a post-Roe environment, litigation-fearing platforms will cover their hides by tearing down online access to abortion healthcare and support.

Facebook, no stranger to sucking up to and amplifying the authoritarian right, has also tried to restrict employees from talking about abortion bans at work, triggering a backlash. The company is also finding itself under fire after it classified one prominent pro-choice activism group a terrorist organization.

Countless tech companies, including Facebook, have failed to even issue basic platitudes on securing women’s location, app usage, or browsing data from state officials (or vigilantes) looking to punish women in the wake of Roe’s reversal.

Again, this initial lack of any meaningful backbone whatsoever in the face of one of the most wide-reaching, transformative, legally dubious, and dangerous political projects in a generation doesn’t exactly instill confidence that Facebook will make sound decisions as U.S. authoritarianism accelerates and a radical court steadily chips away at democratic norms and long-established law.

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Companies: facebook, meta

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Comments on “Facebook Bans People For Simply Saying Abortion Pills Exist”

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Koby (profile) says:

They Got Caught

The company’s systems claim that even mentioning that these pills exist violates its community standards related to “restricted goods and services.” Yet when other reporters made similar posts promising to mail marijuana or guns, there were no restrictions

This is precisely why we need transparency in the algorithm. With simple testing we know that fb is lying. This isn’t a moderation decision, it’s a company deceiving users about its own terms of service, and we should be able to hold them accountable.

Naughty Autie says:

Re:

This is part of what I’m calling the SCOTUS Effect (in light of its repeal of Roe v. Wade). Facebook is scared to leave up any mention of abortion in case they get sued, but know that the US Government recognise the existence of § 230, and thus will leave them alone regarding things like guns and illegal substances because only the Facebook users who created those posts will be prosecuted.

This is precisely why we need transparency in the algorithm.

And how will making Facebook open source improve anything? Most people won’t understand the code, including those with some experience of coding (like me), and it doesn’t relate to crappy decisions like this one, anyway. Much better by far to point out Facebook’s inconsistencies in the application of its policies, as has already been done by Karl in this article.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Koby:

This is precisely why we need transparency in the algorithm.

CS geek:
Automated moderation is done by comparing a set of words (taken from a list of such sets), and . When the engine returns a positive match, the moderated item is flagged as offending. Next question?

Koby:
Tell us the list of word sets!

CS geek:
No. The word sets are input to the algorithm, not the algorithm. You are entitled to the algorithm, not the inputs. And we are not required to walk you through the algorithm or its consequences.

BernardoVerda (profile) says:

Re: They Got Caught

This is precisely why we need transparency in the algorithm. With simple testing we know that fb is lying.

Ummm… No.

This has little or nothing to do with “the algorithm”. This was just a straight-forward, manually-applied, brute-force “filter”, imposed over the results of any algorithm that might or might not be involved.

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Anonymous Coward says:

Well the comments on this are definitely going to be… interesting. So let’s just head off a few of the strawmen right now.

  1. This article did not in any way say that Facebook is not allowed to do this or that they should face criminal or civil penalties for doing so.
  2. At no point were Trump supporters posts auto-removed simply for posting the words “Trump” or “Conservative”
  3. It is not hypocritical to disagree with a particular moderation decision while still supporting their right to moderate

OK, carry on.

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Valis (profile) says:

Facebook is inherently misogynistic

There are men making misogynistic/racist/homophobic/transphobic comments on FB all day long without any consequence. Yet, when I try to point out that they are being misogynistic/racist/homophobic/transphobic, MY comments get deleted for “hate speech”!

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
discussitlive (profile) says:

If this goes on

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”

Robert A. Heinlein – Revolt in 2100

“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

And today started out to be such a nice day…

That One Guy (profile) says:

'What do you mean they tested our claims, that's not fair!'

Nothing like people testing your system and finding out that while a message about mailing abortion pills gets blocked the exact same message with guns or weed swapped in goes through fine to undercut the whole ‘this isn’t about abortion it’s about community standards violations’ claim.

nasch (profile) says:

Re:

Did we mention that people swapped ‘abortion pills’ with “weed” and “guns” and those posts remain up?

The story certainly mentioned it.

“Yet, when the AP reporter made the same exact post but swapped out the words “abortion pills” for “a gun,” the post remained untouched. A post with the same exact offer to mail “weed” was also left up and not considered a violation.”

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

ThorsProvoni (profile) says:

Martillo v. Twitter el al. Went to a Panel

Now perhaps you can understand why it is so important to obliterate every depraved and evil social medium platform that like Facebook is destroying the American political, legal, and social system.

After 5 months A Medium Corp. finally seems to have realized that I filed a lawsuit, whose counts are based on

  1. federal public accommodation discrimination,
  2. federal civil rights discrimination, and
  3. Massachusetts Commonwealth common carriage discrimination (Diversity Jurisdiction).

A Medium Corp. has added an experienced civil rights litigator to its legal team.

[Massachusetts has the nastiest penalties for common carriage discrimination. Massachusetts enacted the relevant statutes in 1869. The penalties have not changed since 1869, and they go nuclear in the context of the Internet.]

A panel of judges from the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has been working on the case for almost a month.

The line-up of judges on the panel is interesting.

  1. William Joseph Kayatta Jr. (Obama appointee) was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1953. His paternal grandfather was an immigrant from Syria married to a first-generation German American and his mother was of Irish descent. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976 from Amherst College and then earned a Juris Doctor in 1979 from Harvard Law School. After law school, he served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Frank M. Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1979 to 1980.
  2. Gustavo Antonio Gelpí Jr. (Biden appointee) was born in 1965, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Gelpí attended high school at Academia del Perpetuo Socorro. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis University in 1987 and a Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School in 1991. He was a law clerk to Juan M. Perez-Gimenez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico from 1991 to 1993. Gelpí was then an assistant federal public defender in the Office of the Federal Public Defender from 1993 to 1997. He worked in Puerto Rico’s Department of Justice from 1997 to 1999, first as an assistant to the attorney general, and then as assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel. During Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Rosselló’s second term, Gelpí served as Puerto Rico’s Solicitor General from 1999 to 2000. He was a special litigation counsel in the law firm of McConnell Valdes from January to June in 2001.
  3. Jeffrey Robert Howard (GWB appointee) graduated from Plymouth State College (now Plymouth State University) in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and he received a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1981. After law school, Howard was an attorney in the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, rising to become Deputy Attorney General.

I hope for the Court of Appeals

  1. to provide guidance that overrules all Zeran-based caselaw and
  2. to remand the case back to District Court.

If the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit fails to remand, I will file a new case because the Original Complaint was dismissed without prejudice.

The New or Amended Complaint will turn the case into a class-action lawsuit. The defendant class will consist of every social medium platform. The plaintiff class will consist of every person that has suffered discrimination in public accommodation, civil rights, or common carriage at the hands of a depraved and evil social medium platform.

My wife will become a co-plaintiff. Together we represent six protected classes under Title II of the CRA of 1964:

  1. religious Jewish (me),
  2. ethnic Jewish (me),
  3. non-white (Olivia),
  4. religious Muslim (Olivia),
  5. Arab (Olivia), and
  6. Palestinian (Olivia),

We will also add a charge of aggregate libel by active curation (Supplemental Jurisdiction) — Justice Thomas et al. will love the creative lawyering.

It pisses me off

  1. that a depraved and evil Zionist anti-Jew invariably libels us with a malicious accusation of antisemitism and
  2. that a depraved and evil social medium platform aggregates and compounds the libel by active curation.

Olivia made me Palestinian by نكاح while I made her Jewish by שטוּפּ. We will love our Jewish and Palestinian children very much.

Massachusetts has the nastiest libel caselaw in the whole USA. In Massachusetts truth is not a defense to a charge of libel, and the accusation of antisemitism against a Jew like me and against a Palestinian like Olivia is a complete lie made with actual malice.

[See Noonan v. Staples, Inc., 556 F.3d 20 (1st Cir. 2009). The phrase “actual malice” in Massachusetts does not have the meaning that SCOTUS gave the phrase. According to the Commonwealth caselaw “actual malice” provides the basis for enhanced compensation to the victim of defamation.]

In addition, Massachusetts continues to recognize the common law crime of criminal libel. Because a depraved and evil Zionist anti-Jew uses the libelous accusation of antisemitism to normalize and to legitimize genocide against a Palestinian, every depraved and evil Zionist anti-Jew under US jurisdiction:

  1. aids, abets, incites, conspires in, or perpetrates genocide and
  2. provides material support to terrorists (perpetrators of genocide — all depraved and evil Zionist colonial settler anti-Jews in stolen Palestine).

The charge of criminal libel has not been filed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for approximately 170 years. It’s time

  1. to start indicting a depraved and evil Zionist anti-Jew for perpetrating this common law crime in Massachusetts and
  2. to arrest the entire US Zionist movement for the probable commission of the following crimes:
  • 18 U.S. Code § 1091 (Genocide) and
  • 18 U.S. Code § 2339A (Providing material support to terrorists).

I don’t expect a ruling from the Court of Appeals before late September because caselaw from over at least 180 years needs to be reviewed.

Raziel says:

Re:

Massachusetts has the nastiest penalties for common carriage discrimination. Massachusetts enacted the relevant statutes in 1869. The penalties have not changed since 1869, and they go nuclear in the context of the Internet.

Okay, tell me when your ISP cuts off your service just because your wife’s Palestinian, then we’ll talk. Until then, stop bringing lawsuits because they’re all bullshit.

This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.

ThorsProvoni (profile) says:

So What If Facebook is Lying?

Thanks to the unconstitutional and inapplicable 47 U.S. Code § 230 (Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material) as well as the legally unreasonable and unconstitutional § 230 caselaw, Facebook and any other similarly depraved and evil racist, discriminatory, and genocide-supporting social medium platform can do anything it wants.

Naughty Autie says:

Re:

Thanks to the proven constitutional and fully applicable 47 U.S. Code § 230 (Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material) as well as the legally reasonable and constitutional § 230 caselaw, Joachim C. Martillo and any other similarly depraved and evil racist, discriminatory, and genocide-supporting vexatious litigant cannot do anything they want.

FTFYA. YW. 😜

Rocky says:

This is precisely why we need transparency in the algorithm

As someone pointed out, a list of words containing things they will moderate isn’t an algorithm. An algorithm checks a post against that list and without that list, you looking at the algorithm will not really help you in any constructive way.

With simple testing we know that fb is lying.

You care to give us a quote from Facebook that proves that they are lying?

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