It doesn’t matter how dedicated you are to protecting women, at some point you have to admit to yourself that “many” of the posts on AWDTSG groups violate Facebook’s Policies on Harassment and Bullying.
So we are left to wonder, why aren’t they being shut down (aside from the blatant misandry that has come to permeate society in recent years)? The answer has to do with a loophole and a catch-22. The loophole keeps the posts from being removed by Facebook’s algorithm, which can do a decent job of automatically removing offensive posts were Paola not directly instructing her moderators and group members to use a loophole to get around it. The catch-22 is what keeps the posts and groups from being removed from manual complaints and individual reports.
The catch-22 and the loophole described below can be abused by ANY group, including race-based hate groups, and groups that are open to everyone “except” LGBTQ people.
The Loophole
Only Violate Terms of Service in the Comments. Keep the original post clean.
This has two benefits to the groups.
1. It keeps them off Facebook’s radar so the auto-triggered removal features don’t get tripped.
2. It ensures that the post itself can stay up, even if the offending content in the comment gets removed.
The group moderators know about this loophole and it’s benefits, which is why Paola Sanchez (the group’s global leader) specifically tell members to exploit it:
I understand the reason Facebook would not just want to remove entire posts because of one comment. Any troll could go around leaving policy-violating comments just to get other peoples’ posts removed. Facebook needs to update their policy to specifically exclude from this “rule” any post where the user who made the original post is also the commenter making offensive comments on their own post.
If, for example, I made a post that said “All {insert ethnic group}…” and then I followed up with a comment “Should die”. Do you think only the comment should be removed, or the entire post?
If that one slight policy change were enacted by Meta, almost every Are We Dating the Same Guy group on Facebook would get removed within weeks. Either that, or they really DO manage to operate without consistently violating Meta policies. Good luck policing 20,000 – 100,000 random people in every city in the world with a handful of unpaid moderators. They’ll have no choice but to leave the Facebook platform and move to their own website app, which FINALLY removes the protection that “Section 230” unwisely grants social media companies. A “private” app is unlikely to be as shielded from lawsuits, and there would be a deluge of them.
The Catch-22
Self-Reporting
The person being harassed or bullied has to be the one to report it, even if that person doesn’t have access to the post, which is required to report it.
I honestly don’t understand the purpose of this. Shouldn’t anyone be able to report that someone else is being harassed or bullied?
Men aren’t allowed to know they’re being accused. They aren’t allowed to know what they’re being accused of. They aren’t allowed to defend themselves or tell their side of the story. And, the final nail in the coffin of helplessness that is driving men close to suicide, they aren’t even allowed to report it.
These two issues make a mockery of the intent behind Meta’s online harassment and bullying policies. I want to make something clear to anyone reading this and thinking it’s just a problem abusive men have, and it won’t affect them:
The catch-22 and the loophole described above can be abused by ANY group, including race-based hate groups, and groups that are open to everyone “except” LGBTQ people.
Anyone who thinks those policies are important to “some groups” and not others is… someone who needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
The entire concept behind these groups is wrong. It is unjust vigilantism that does more harm than good. Women have legitimate complaints and concerns, and I am all for things like Project Callisto being available to all people. If you report someone and then another person reports them later, you two are “matched” and given the tools and advice needed to protect yourselves while holding the person accountable. I don’t see how allowing men to use this same ingenious tool or framework would put women in danger. Even if was only for women, it would be a lot better than what is happening now with AWDTSG.
Those groups aren’t keeping people safer. Women are putting themselves in danger by posting, and it is ruining good men’s lives to the point of suicide. More lives will be ruined, more people will be hurt, and more people will die — all because Meta refuses to do anything about these groups. I urge the Facebook Oversight Board to take action. This gets worse every day.
End AWDTSG 