Facebook Community Substandards
We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.
An excerpt from Facebook’s Community Standards on Hate Speech.
Let’s ignore the factual inaccuracies (which are clearly designed to provoke) and instead focus on the slur being used “Chinese […] the same breed”.
“Breed” is clearly not an acceptable term when referring to someone’s race/ethnicity (or country of origin). If for some reason, this isn’t already immediately obvious to you, a good measure of the word’s misuse would be to ponder; in filling out a form (medical, insurance, travel, or otherwise) have you ever been asked for your breed? The answer is, of course, no. Unless per chance you happened to be on the receiving end of some rather specific racial attacks.
The term ‘breed’ cannot be accurately used to refer to one’s race. Instead it’s used to refer to specific sub-groups of animals within a species. The term ‘breed’ does have scientific origins whereby there are some complexities involved. Nonetheless, ‘breed’ is a common word, with a well understood meaning in day-to-day conversation. If I was to (with neutral body language) approach someone walking their dog, and ask what breed their dog is; the question would be clearly understood without any assumption of malice. If I was to do the same whilst approaching someone of similar ethnicity to myself, with a partner of a different ethnicity, and ask what “breed” their partner is, you can bet they would not characterise this interactions the same way. Why? Because the term applies to animals, it’s inherently dehumanising.
However, Facebook themselves make the valid point that sometimes speech that is seemingly hate speech, may be contextual. For example, a minority group attempting to reclaim a derogatory term as matter of self-empowerment. Or perhaps, it’s just a matter of satire, where the poster clearly doesn’t mean for their words to be interpreted in earnest.
The context here is pretty obvious. Sadly, life is somewhat in a state of disarray at the moment, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that’s affecting a significant portion of the world. There is associated fear and some individuals are panicking, and given the stress, are perhaps not behaving as rationally as they would normally. This phenomenon has been widely covered by the media (and on social media), it’s far reaching and not limited to any particular group. Additionally, we are now seeing individuals using the ensuing chaos as an opportunity to voice their prejudices.
The commenter is clearly voicing prejudice, it meets Facebook’s criteria for targeting a race, ethnicity or national origin and is dehumanising. However, perhaps it’s low impact, I’m overreacting, and no-one else is going to interpret this as offensive. Seems as we’re talking context: let’s have a look at who the commenter was talking to (tagged), how they interpreted the comment, and how they responded, in the thread’s very next comment.
Well, the target recipient (person tagged) was evidently offended. Additionally the remarks, which were directed toward a particular person, were taken personally.
To be clear, I do not know either of the two people involved in this altercation, and as I’m sure you can surmise after this little cherub of an interactions, there’s more that follows. However, this is a local community group, a small country town to be precise. There’s a very real possibility that they do know each other. Even if they don’t, there’s a very real possibility that they will encounter each other. This exchange would be an issue on the Internet at large, however considering that we’re talking about people that are likely to encounter each other face-to-face, this is a whole other level of dangerous.
Naturally, given all the above, I anonymously reported the comment to Facebook for review as, as described, it violates their community guidelines. By the way, it may be worth noting that I’m not personally involved in this sub-thread. I had made comments elsewhere on the origin post, however I did not and have not posted in this sub-thread. I’ve opted not to provoke the aggressor, simply reporting the comment seemed like a more sensible course of action.
Facebook ‘reviewed’ this post much quicker than I would have anticipated. A bit over an hour from when I reported the comment. However, after seeing the outcome, I suspect that they get through these reports at the rate they do because the reviewers simply aren’t spending the time necessary to actually review the content being reported.
The reviewer found that the comment did not ‘go against any of our Community Standards’ and provided me with a link to the aforementioned Community Standards. Of course, I’ve already been through the relevant Hate Speech subsection of the community standards and demonstrated why this is a pretty clear-cut violation of those standards.
Furthermore, Facebook have let me know, that despite them deciding not to take the comment down, they understand I don’t like it. They’ve suggested I hide the post and/or block the person responsible. Whilst that’s all well and good, that doesn’t help anyone else. In particular the person tagged within the offending comment, whom immediately followed up clearly expressing that they were offended and took these comments personally. Additionally, it doesn’t exactly send a strong message in opposition of hate speech on their platform. It’s pretty clear that instead Facebook will just play it fast and loose, based on the discretion of the reviewer involved. Community Standards be damned.
So, in spite of this all, why am I writing this article here today?
Well, there’s no other way for me to even attempt to provide this information back to Facebook! The message above from Facebook was received in my ‘Support Inbox’, but there’s no way for me to respond. There’s no ‘Outbox’, the ‘dialogue’ is one way only. Facebook can send me messages, but on a platform specifically designed for users to share content, it would seem Facebook’s engineering team just couldn’t quite work out how to let users share a message with Facebook’s support staff.
If a company the size of Facebook can’t pull this off, it must be a truly challenging feat; I must be imagining all the customer service I receive elsewhere. Alas, it would seem this is what we’ve all come to expect and accept of a service that is “free”.
