Facebook homophobic censorship

This 2016 video from the USA is called I’m LGBT and gay but I’m also showing how Facebook is homophobic to LGBT people.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

The Facebook system that determines whether an advertisement has a political message also appears to place advertisements by LGBT organizations in this category, while they have no political content. That’s what The Washington Post discovered.

The director of the LGBT Network, an American non-profit organization, says that the social network has blocked some fifteen of its advertisements since spring. He wanted to advertise a Pride Parade and a concert on a beach. The newspaper writes that in the same period other organizations also had to deal with blockades.

‘It is Orwellian‘

A retired man from New York, who manages a page about a historical gay café, tells the Post that Facebook has blocked so many advertisements that he stopped using the words “LGBT” and “gay”. “It’s ridiculous”, he says. “And Orwellian.” The latter is a reference to George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which he describes a totalitarian government that tries to control the mindset of its inhabitants.

The man from New York sent Facebook an e-mail. He was first told that his ads fell into the politics category, because LGBT is a civil rights issue. “You have to be authorized to place advertisements with this content”, wrote a Facebook employee. Later he received a second email in which Facebook confirms that it regards LGBT advertisements as political.

Since this spring the platform has applied stricter rules for advertisements with political messages. …

Those who want to place such an advertisement now must identify themselves with a driving license or passport, give their home address and the last four digits of their citizen service number. If this does not happen, then the advertisement will not be placed.

Filter process unclear

In a reaction to the news, Facebook says that most of the blocked ads have been unjustly labeled as ‘political’. The platform did not want to tell the newspaper which criteria were used. It is also unclear to what extent an algorithm labels advertisements or that an employee of the company does this.

Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy, sparked unrest at the social network after he sat behind his friend, Brett Kavanaugh, at the Senate Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh’s angry denial he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford.

Facebook reported on September 28 that hackers had exploited a technical flaw in the social media platform and obtained the user information of about 50 million accounts. In this largest ever breach since the company was founded 14 years ago, the hackers found a security hole in the “View As” feature—that allows users to see what their profile looks like from other Facebook accounts—to gain access to login details: here.