Avoiding Facebook Jail: Using Opinions and Questions Instead of Statements

I am surprised at the number of people who think "I disagree" is an opinion. It is a statement, perhaps even a statement of fact, but it is not an opinion. People offer their opinions when they support their claims and statements. There isn't even a definition of "opinion" that allows for an opinion to be an unsupported statement. Despite that, there will be those who think there is a definition that reads: "opinion - (noun) everyone has one; (see also: asshole)."

There is more to making a statement of fact an opinion than adding "I think" to the beginning of the statement, but that is always the least you should do to stay out of Facebook jail. However, if you've already leveled up (a term my granddaughter has taught me) in the punishment factor of the Facebook algorithm, you are as likely as my friend Bryan to get sent to jail if you try to qualify a statement as an opinion by saying, "I think you are white trailer trash." It's okay to think that if you are the good kind of racist like Bryan is, but it isn't okay to just say it that way.

Avoiding Facebook Jail: Insult Creatively

If William Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be quite old and would likely have retired by now. Well, he isn't alive, and I fit the rest of the description. 

In addition to those similarities, Shakespeare was a smart ass who made his points regarding the sitting royalty and celebrities of the day through creative insults about characters that were similar to them, but who were not them. It would leave those he insulted in the awkward position of claiming a villain or oaf in a play was really them because of the similarities, or to point out the contrasts and laugh off the similarities as 'Billy S. just keeping it real.'

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.

Avoiding Facebook Jail and My Friend Bryan

My friend Bryan seems to have this recurring problem lately of ending up in Facebook jail. If you don't know what that is, it's a large social media website that was created by Mark Zuckerberg.

It turns out that Bryan keeps getting put into jail because he is racist. I don't want to anyone to get the wrong impression, though. He is racist in the positive sense of the word, which is that he is racist like I am racist. As long as we agree on what is acceptable racism, Bryan is okay in my book.

The type of racism Bryan and I agree upon is that we both despise white people who despise people who aren't white. However, Bryan is not as philosophical as I am, and he just blurts things out that violate the rules regarding hate speech. Calling people names based on their races is racist hate speech even if they are stereotypical white right-wing tea party warmongers.