Facebook hates Cops

Recently my friends over on LEWTFM posted a news story to their FB Page. This news story got reported by someone and earned the page admin a banning. Oh wait, no it earned multiple of the page admins a banning. So for 30 days most of the staff of this FB page is blocked from being on Facebook.

A Facebook Ban

The real kicker here is that this is not the first time I am hearing of this. Other popular public safety pages on Facebook such as Big City Cops and even EMT/Paramedic have also been banned. I could keep on listing pages, RescueHumor included that have been banned but you get the point.

What is going on here?

Well Facebook has their Terms of Service (TOS), sometimes called the Community Standards. Now these standards seem full of double standards.

Case in point, we here at RescueHumor at one time every Saturday and Sunday posted photos of people passed out drunk as a “Weekend Caption this”. Two weeks in a row I was banned due to these photos violating the TOS dealing with showing persons “using illegal drugs or drinking irresponsibility or being passed out”. Yet you can find countless Facebook pages that are devoted to showing nothing but people using drugs and photos of people drunk, vomiting and passed out. I post it twice a week, I get banned. These pages post it multiple times a day everyday and nothing happens to them.

Facebook Hates Cops

So what is it that got LEWTFM banned from Facebook? It was a link to a news story. The link went to a newspaper’s webpage that was doing a story on how the NYPD is no longer going to arrest topless women in public. A link that is all over on Facebook. But it seems that because this time it was on a page that is pro-police, the Facebook censors decided to remove it and ban the administrators of the offending page.

OK so how do to the Facebook censors find out about these offensive posts. People have to report them. That is right, Facebook is not actively looking ensuring their standards are met. Facebook needs for users to click in the upper right corner of a posting then click the “Report” link.

I personally have reported photos that are truly offensive. Photos of dead police officers in the street after a shooting. Photos of people with guns and captions that they will use the guns to go kill cops. These photos are not taken down. A day after reporting them I get an email saying these images do not violate the Facebook terms of service.

In other words. If a pro-police page posts something that someone might find offensive, it is deleted and the admin banned. If anyone else posts something that is a clear violation of Facebook Policy (death and threats) but is anti-police, then no action is taken.

Ergo Facebook hates cops.