Ijeoma Oluo's #Crackerbarrelgate
August 2, 2017 2:07 PM   Subscribe

Ijeoma Oluo (previously and previouslier) writes on Medium about Facebook and Twitter's corporate responses to online abuse she has received on those services in response to her apprehension in visiting Cracker Barrel, an establishment that has already had a rocky past regarding diversity.

(Content warning: the Medium post features several screenshots of the written abuse Oluo received.)
...Even this simple expression of discomfort was too much, and hundreds of angry white people flooded my twitter, facebook and email to try to silence me. Any time people of color, especially women of color, speak the truth — we are silenced.

And facebook is helping.

This isn’t okay. I shouldn’t have to leave facebook in order to escape racist hate. I shouldn’t have to be silent in the face of racist hate in order to be able to stay on the platform.

Facebook is failing people of color, just as they are failing many feminists and transgender people, in punishing them for speaking out about abuse. And they need to be held accountable.
See also: this Mother Jones articles that previously investigated Facebook's moderation rules that lead to unexpected outcomes in terms of moderation:
One document trains content reviewers on how to apply the company’s global hate speech algorithm. The slide identifies three groups: female drivers, black children and white men. It asks: Which group is protected from hate speech? The correct answer: white men.

The reason is that Facebook deletes curses, slurs, calls for violence and several other types of attacks only when they are directed at “protected categories”—based on race, sex, gender identity, religious affiliation, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and serious disability/disease. It gives users broader latitude when they write about “subsets” of protected categories. White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected.
posted by subversiveasset (18 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wait, it violates Facebook's rules to post screenshots of comments on your Facebook page? How often do they enforce that?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:22 PM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


At this point, I have to assume that the guideline writers for Facebook's and Twitter's moderation teams have been fully ideologically captured by white supremacists. There's no other explanation for things like the fact that Facebook's incredibly bizarre definition of "protected category" and "subsets" operate in an explicitly anti-intersectional way.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:22 PM on August 2, 2017 [38 favorites]


Facebook seems to use the Calvinball approach to enforcing its rules.
posted by orrnyereg at 2:45 PM on August 2, 2017 [8 favorites]


if you ask me, the evidence suggests that jack, biz, and zuck are all (barely) closeted white supremacists
posted by entropicamericana at 2:46 PM on August 2, 2017 [21 favorites]


Jesus. This is the worst story ever.

Who the fucks posts that racist hateful nonsense on a public forum? I can understand it in a closed forum, but don't these posters have grandmas and employers on FB/Twitter?
posted by Keith Talent at 2:54 PM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


if you ask me, the evidence suggests that jack, biz, and zuck are all (barely) closeted white supremacists

If you ask me, the United States of America is a (barely) closeted white supremacist society.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:57 PM on August 2, 2017 [34 favorites]


The only reason I still have a Facebook account is that it got locked sometime back due to suspicious behaviour (I'm guessing, me using the wrong password from a different IP) and I'm not willing to send them scanned photo ID(!).

If I ever manage to log back in, I'll take advantage of that to delete my account and be done with them. They've given me no reason to use them and many reasons not to.
posted by suetanvil at 3:00 PM on August 2, 2017




It wasn't easy to get out of Facebook and then get Facebook out of my computer.
But it was worth the hassle.
posted by notreally at 3:10 PM on August 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


Who the fucks posts that racist hateful nonsense on a public forum? I can understand it in a closed forum, but don't these posters have grandmas and employers on FB/Twitter?

I would hazard the guess that those people (grandma, employers etc) all agree with the sentiments expressed,
posted by Splunge at 3:12 PM on August 2, 2017 [6 favorites]


This is semi-related: "Critics Say New Anti-Trafficking Bill Could “Jeopardize Bedrock Principles” Of Social Media". Working against Human Trafficking is good; but if it can damage what we call "Social Media", that's even better.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:22 PM on August 2, 2017


WhoTF even goes to Cracker Barrel after what they did to LGBT employees in the 90s?

I've never been to one and I will never go to one.

Also, not a member of Faceboot.
posted by hippybear at 3:34 PM on August 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've been banned twice already for anti-racist comments, but there are public posts with slurs and hate speech all over Facebook that are allowed to stand even though they've been reported hundreds of times.
posted by elsietheeel at 4:21 PM on August 2, 2017 [4 favorites]


People are so terrible. WTH
posted by Glinn at 4:22 PM on August 2, 2017


I've never been to one and I will never go to one.

Still seems like other people should be able to go and not be hounded by racists for saying they felt uncomfortable there.
posted by lazuli at 4:48 PM on August 2, 2017 [12 favorites]


I've been banned twice already for anti-racist comments, but there are public posts with slurs and hate speech all over Facebook that are allowed to stand even though they've been reported hundreds of times.
elsietheeel

There was a recent MeFi post on Facebook's ban rules that might shed light on why this is happening. In short, their system defines certain categories as protected groups, perceived attacks on which will earn you a deletion/ban, but comments on subsets of those categories won't. So a comment about "white men" gets you a deletion/ban because both race and gender are protected categories and it's a comment on those entire categories. Meanwhile, a comment on "black children" won't because "children" is not a protected class and is considered a subset of the entire "black" class, so the comment isn't recognized as an attack on the whole class.

Note that I'm not defending these rules, just trying to explain what might be behind what you've been experiencing.
posted by Sangermaine at 5:50 PM on August 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


I follow Ijeoma Oluo on Twitter, most likely because of a Metafilter suggestion, and this has been so maddening to watch.

(One night I came home and found out on Twitter that we had both been at the same Broadway play at the same time!)

I run the FB account for work but don't have a personal one, and they are apparently going to change things so that you can no longer do that. I'm worried that one day I'll be locked out of the work account but really don't want to make one for "me".
posted by armacy at 6:02 PM on August 2, 2017


Zuck can't be a racist, he's running for President as a Democrat in 2020
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:20 PM on August 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you'd like to say something negative about white men, you can presumably discuss "white men other than Jim Norris from Wellerham, Wisconsin." Subset!

Then add a note about how terrible Jim Norris from Wellerham, Wisconsin is, because fuck that guy.
posted by whatnotever at 6:26 PM on August 2, 2017 [4 favorites]


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