Avoiding Facebook Jail: Who is Watching You?

Part of the reason that I decided to write my instructions on how to avoid Facebook jail for Bryan is that we haven't been able to find the time to resume our talk about it since it first happened a week ago. His first comment to me was, "They must have somebody watching me because they hit me with the seven-day suspension just for saying [redacted] was white trailer trash." I was barely twenty minutes into the explanation when he had to take a call. Ever since then, he's been busy getting things done that he has put off until now. 

Of course, there aren't people watching accounts for violations. The surveillance is being done by bots that act like probation officers. If you don't know what one is, they are people who work in the justice system and to whom people on probation must periodically report.

These bots operate under formulas contained in an algorithm. Once executed, algorithms create ascending levels of plays that are self-defining as the algorithm ages. Even the people who design the algorithm and its functions have no idea how far it will go because they didn't tell it what to do; they gave it various factors that trigger different punishments for different violations, and the bot takes it from there.

If you recall, I likened some of the violations the bots detect to the slight difference in basketball between a charging foul and a blocking foul, which is whether the defender's feet are set or moving. Similarly, there are subtle differences in how an algorithm might have a bot respond to almost identical situations. From what I can tell, the Facebook algorithm uses a factor in disputes that considers whether a complainant's submission is valid and adjusts both accounts accordingly.

To give an example about what that means, Bryan called someone a name that we good white racists call bad white racists, and which got him suspended for three days. It also merited the complainant's account for reporting Bryan's overtly racist comment to the authorities. When Bryan got back into the game and called someone "white trailer trash," the bot blew the whistle immediately upon the merited complainant's reporting of it.

Had Bryan instead called the person "wh**e *r*iler *r*s*" in the first place, he could have defended the reporting of it by claiming that "whale broiler crisp" is not racist, and that he was just being sensitive to animal lovers. The algorithm then would have merited Bryan for being such a sensitive soul and put a watch on the white trailer trash who reported him.

However, because the first report of Bryan's racist comment was deemed to be valid, had Bryan tried to use that technique upon being released from the jail, the algorithm would add "wh**e *r*iler *r*s*" and "whale broiler crisp" to the list of names white supremacists are called in case they complain. The same person complaining was likely what triggered the algorithm to throw him in jail for seven days, and not the term "white trailer trash" itself.

No one actually knows how far the Facebook algorithm will go in punishing people who violate its terms of conduct, but it doesn't seem to be as far as the Clintons. I suppose it could be Facebook doing it and blaming the Clintons, but the odds of that being the case are three-to-one, at best.

Bryan says he has been warned that his next violation will result in thirty days in the hole. That may be true, but I recommended he not download any gamma ray fly swatter apps, just in case.