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Facebook on Thursday suspended Infowars founder Alex Jones for posting a number of videos that violated the platform's content rules.
Facebook has not, however, suspended the current page of Infowars, nor the official Alex Jones page, nor any other page where these inappropriate videos have been posted.
So, how does it work? Why Jones – a conspiracy theorist who continues to argue that Sandy Hook's shooting tragedy was a hoax – was suspended for a month, but his Pages, where his conspiracy theories are posted, have been able to stay?
It is likely that we will move away from frustration for some time, given the role that social platforms like Facebook and Twitter currently play in monitoring Internet content. In the case of Facebook, understanding the Jones / Infowars problem means understanding the distinction between a Facebook user profile and a Facebook page.
Alex Jones' personal user profile is an admin for a number of pages related to Infowars, which means that he has permission to view or share any videos on these pages. Whenever Jones shares a post that violates Facebook's policies on any of these pages, both user profiles of Jones and page receive a sort of "strike" against their record – essentially , a warning from Facebook to take the post down and cut it out.
But the reason Jones was suspended, but his Pages are still in place, is that Jones posted the same bad content on several pages firing several strikes against his record. So, if Jones shared three bad videos on three different pages, for example, he would receive nine total hits, while each page would receive only three.
Makes sense? This is Facebook's attempt to punish bad actors who share the content, but not necessarily the page that hosts it.
This process becomes more and more blurred, at least from the outside. Facebook does not share the number of "strikes" that a user or page needs to get before being suspended, for example. Facebook is afraid that sharing this issue would help bad actors play the system. (He would.)
Facebook also does not share the duration of strikes in a user's file. Strikes are not permanent, which means that they are finally cleaned up. But again, Facebook is afraid that sharing this period would help people play the system. (Again, that would be the case.)
There is also this: All strikes are not equal. For example, if you publish exploiting content to a child, one hit means that your account is permanently banned. In the case of Jones, some of the videos that were removed violated Facebook's rules regarding intimidation, and included attacks on people based on their religion or gender identity, said a spokesperson for Facebook. In this case, multiple strikes against Jones lead to a temporary suspension.
Facebook's policies are nuanced because Internet monitoring is nuanced. But policies have also been confusing, and for many people, frustrating, especially in a world where misinformation can spread so quickly. This is one of the reasons Facebook has recently released the rules in their entirety.
Infowars in particular has created a lot of drama for Facebook lately. When business leaders were asked why Infowars, who has a long history of spreading false information, is allowed on the site given Facebook's promise to stop the spread of misinformation. , leaders have described it as a matter of "freedom of expression." When Kara Swisher Recode asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to develop a recent episode of his podcast, Zuckerberg said that he did not believe that fake news should be removed from Facebook unless that they incite to violence. Even deeply shocking things like denials of the Holocaust should remain, he added.
"There are things that different people are wrong – I do not think they're intentionally wrong," Zuckerberg said. (Although Swisher rebuffed his use of the word "intentionally" – noting that the Holocaust deniers intended to be wrong, the reference to Zuckerberg's Holocaust even more boring.)
All this drama has been as polarizing online as you thought. "Some very nice pages from both sides," quips The New York Times Kevin Roose on Twitter mocking Facebook's defense of Infowars a few weeks ago. Julia Carrie Wong of The Guardian sums up the dilemma of Facebook with a good tweet: "The fun thing about alex jones and infowars on facebook is that he had just shown a female pacifier fb the would make it fall in the blink of an eye, "she wrote," but as it does something much more insidious and hurtful, their hands are bound by their "principles".
Alex Jones, meanwhile, said to be a victim of a broader media conspiracy to "defuse" Infowars, and other conservative voices. "It's not about Alex Jones, it's about mid-term and beyond," Jones said from a Facebook livestream on Friday. (Yes, even if Jones is suspended from Facebook, he can still appear live on videos published by one of his pages.) "They are preparing to unleash civil unrest all over the country." This argument was reinforced by YouTube Jones and Infowars last week.
Putting everything aside, all these problems come from the same challenge: deciding what should be allowed, and what should not be allowed, on services like Facebook and Twitter. Anyone can hear on certain items – child pornography, for example, is a no-not-obvious – but what about so-called false news? And if it's shared innocently? And if it's satirical?
Facebook is at the center of this problem. Since Alex Jones and Infowars are also involved, you can bet that it will not go away anytime soon.
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