Update: Facebook Un-Cancels Judge Motley

How is it “cancelled”? It seems like Facebook has safeguards to prevent anyone (such as a random teenager in Macedonia who is working under contract for the Russian disinformation apparatus) from running paid advertisements that have words like “Supreme Court” or “2024 election” in them.

If the organization that is running advertisements gets verified as an actual business, then they can post ads that mention the Supreme Court, no?

Cancel Facebook. You can do it.

Checking New Haven Promise's Facebook page, both these ads are up. They are not being censored, even though they are political in nature. The sole issue here is seems to be New Haven Promise wanting to pay to place these posts on pages not its own. As far as limiting what Melton considers "harmful" speech, does she want Facebook to censor what people put on their own pages? As an educational entity, Promise should support free inquiry, not censorship.

Mr. Bass, this is misleading and needs more context. Facebook (Meta) has long held that any paid advertising MUST meet its advertising guidelines. In this case, the Ads can be resubmitted to Facebook as "political advertising" - this causes an additional review not just by the algorithms but by humans or committees of humans, who can better determine the purpose of the ad.

For example, if a political ad is designed to be decisive and says "my opponent ABC said XYZ" then XYZ will need to be fact-checked before the ad runs and if true the ad will be approved to run (with a disclaimer) and may be targeted to ABC constituents. They actually have far more controls than say postcards or mailers.

The private sector has dealt with this for years now. A business MUST meet the stringent guidelines and it seems the Promise Organization was unaware of this and believed a post can be boosted outside those guidelines (that is incorrect), boosting a public post and targeting it IS Advertising.

However, if you want to post something on your own Facebook Page, as long as it meets those far less stringent guidelines then it will be posted - that is the case here for Promise. So while Meta does review those guides and changes them often, they have every right to do so and it is the user's or advertisers' responsibility to abide by them. We have dealt with these guidelines in the private sector for many years and while frustrating the same rules should apply to all of us - regardless of how positive a message or post it is.

The MUCH BIGGER issue is your editor's "clickbait" headline - "Facebook Cancels Judge Motley". This is OBVIOUSLY NOT TRUE and that headline should never be approved. Can you tell the NHI readers who approved it, I would like to email them? If not then Mr. Bass (and whoever approved the headline), it is these types of headlines that get the media in trouble with the general public - it continues the erosion of credibility, objectivity, and sadly even honesty

[Paul: Thank you for the comment! I wrote the headline and approved it. I still believe it is true. I respect that you disagree. The Facebook algorithm has keywords it works on. It ends up de facto canceling certain innocuous or socially helpful boosts based on that algorithm. I would argue it had a political de facto effect. Then when humans appealed, an algorithm turned them down without any more feedback. I think Facebook has a big problem, and with its size and business model is spectacularly ill-equipped to address it. I respect that you see it differently and may be correct.]

I refuse to participate with Facebook, Twitter, or other social media pages whose business model is to promote discord and division for likes and shares, and data mine their users for profits. And now they have computer bots censuring historical facts and figures because computers are stupid and don’t understand the difference between misinformation, hate speech, and historical facts and scientific information. Nuance and discretion are not computers strong points. Remember when Facebook was calling breastfeeding and breast cancer posts pornography? The programmers at these platforms need to program their bots to recognize these differences and to have a human being review the appeals of denials to see where their bot failed to make the accurate decision.

Impediments to postings have been deliberately created as a response to political demands for censorship.
To me the internet and social media are similar to a phone, those things we used to have distant conversations for decades. No one would have thought of censoring our phone calls. There was something called privacy, although phone taps were used by some, but not to monitor everyone.
Today all the major search engines and social media monitor our contacts and sell our personal data, something that is restricted in Europe, but not in the U.S.
Social media is now doing the work of government: work that government itself is prohibited from doing, but which it pressures social media to do with its blessing.
No one in government is acting to protect our privacy because government approves and the oligarchs who control the media are agree to cooperate.
The coordinated attacks on Joe Rogan, a podcaster with a daily base of 11 million listeners, shows how much of a threat dissenting voices are to total control of the managed and manipulated news that many still access, oblivious to the political agenda of most main stream media or legacy media.
TheInternet is right. We can unsubscribe from Facebook and other sites and find alternatives, just as so many dissenting voices left YouTube or other censoring sites for new marketplaces for new ideas.
So how does it feel to live in 1984?
The old mantra from the 1960s may still be relevant: Turn on, tune in and drop out.

Hopefully, Facebook sees past this, and the posts can reach a wider audience. These leaders are an inspiration for many, and I don't want people to miss out!

Paul: How are these cancelled? The posts are on New Haven Promise's page. Your article does not state if Promise has tried to comply with Facebook's disclaimer and identification requirements to have these posts appear on others' pages. Besides, NHI censors its advertisers, and supports Orwellian memory holes when it comes to some information (such as defendant tenant's names, criminal suspects names, etc., but pretends to be principled when it comes to Greer's legal fees.


[Paul responds: Thanks for the comment! New Haven Promise followed the posted rules and got two automated responses, with the explanation that its subject matter was out of bounds. I agree the word "canceled" gets thrown around casually -- and it always seems to mean a right-wing idea doesn't get boosted by liberals who consider certain views out of bounds. I think it works both ways. Both sides do it. And under pressure, Facebook doe sit. I respect your argument and others here that this doesn't rise to that level. I disagree respectfully, and recognize I might have it wrong! As for your point about not publishing names of criminal suspects -- I'll never understand this blood lust from some readers to have names immediately published of people accused of crimes, without finding out if the charges are true or at least even what the arrestee's side of the story is, before memorializing forever on the web an accusation that can destroy their reputation. In my view, waiting until we get more information in most cases (except when there's an immediate public safety concern or public figure involved) is responsible and humane, given how often it's been shown that people are charged with crimes they didn't commit. I don't quite get how that has anything to do with "canceling" views one doesn't agree with. There's this idea that somehow someone's getting a unfair privilege for allegedly committing a crime. As for Rabbi Greer's legal fees -- that was a HUGE public issue! It involved how millions of dollars of public tax credits meant for low income housing might be spent. It involved whether a victim of sexual abuse in a case litigated and decided will ever get compensated in any meaningful way after a court ordered more than $20 million in damages. It involved not a defendant accused of a crime without having his side told, but a convicted sex offender who lost both a civil and criminal case, with his side told in depth, often. I would argue that story was the epitome of a public-interest journalism subject, revealing how the criminal justice system does and doesn't work and seeking to hold it accountable and keep it transparent, with implications for not just an individual's expectations of justice, but for neighborhoods and the approval of public tax credits.]

Readers are leaders! If students of color or any ethnicity are not learning this information at school or home then social media is the next platform to learn about Black History! FB should not have that kind of censorship! Especially if it has been resubmitted! Students today are enamored with social media platforms! FB safeguards should add some Educators, on their human committees and not rely totally on algorithms.

Mr. Bass, please clarify your update. You write, "Melton reported Monday afternoon that after this article appeared, Facebook changed its mind and allowed the boosts". Do you know if they changed their mind because Promise met the existing advertising guidelines? If not, this decision has a material impact on the private sector and much larger ramifications.

PS> It would not surprise me that Promise now meets the advertising guidelines and the ads were approved (as are millions of others are that fail initial review), meaning their system (while not efficient) is working for those that chose to use their services.

Not to sound hopelessly ludditical (yes, I made that up) but I for one am grateful for the level of discourse here, and the opportunity, in the midst of the discussion to learn about several Black Americans of whom I wasn’t aware. For the life of me, however, I don’t understand how identifying someone as a person who has been in politics is problematic (but perhaps I am oversimplifying). Seems that through the day. everyone has learned something about “boosting,” and I for one am grateful for the amazing work New Haven Promise does with the young people in New Haven- keeping them in school, encouraging them to reach high, supporting their aspirations for a college education, and providing paid internships so that a biochemistry major can get a summer job that relates to her major and future interests. This is not to deny that mistakes were made along the way- but the conversation here has been thoughtful and enlightening. Yet another reason to keep an eye on Facebook, its algorithms, and developing policies about speech.

Why do people even use Facebook? It's always sucked.

This just proves how silly cancel culture can be on any media platform. When NH history was taught in school, we learned about Motley and other prominent locals. That is no longer so.

1644, how is the ad with regard to Calvin Hill in any way political? It mentions, in passing, a person (Kurt Schmoke) who last served in political office more than two decades ago. It makes no statement, positive or negative, about his service.

I understand the rationale for the algorithm, but it is poorly designed. And Melton is doing the exact opposite of what you suggest. Rather than promoting cancellation, she is faulting Facebook’s policy as being overly restrictive.

Seems like a classic case of GIGO, meaning that the algorithms no matter how "woke" and keeping us "safe" will eventually spread a wider and wider net.