A while back, I got tossed in Facebook Jail. I haven’t really been able to talk about it, because presumably if you talk about Facebook Jail on Facebook, you get tossed in to Facebook Supermax or Solitary or whatever. However, now that I have the blog, I can talk about anything I like without worrying about Zuck. And here we are.
So, what happened was this: I told a motorcycle-riding girlfriend of mine on FB that I was “looking forward to her visiting, because I was excited to shoot her”. Now, I know most of you realize exactly what I meant. Photographer. Shoot. TAKE PICTURES. But Facebook’s AI nearly-instantly threw me in the clink. I get that they are (feebly) attempting to give the appearance that they care about hate speech, but in this case, obviously, they were wildly wrong. Facebook have a laughable appeal process, which said “don’t expect a response from us” but I followed nonetheless, simply because I thought it was important to them that they consider context when tossing people in Jail, or at least when the person takes the time to appeal. As they promised, that was a futile and pointless exercise, but it ultimately doesn’t really matter. I fight on principle far too often.
I’ve since done a little research, and found that this happens all the time to photographers. Clearly, the FB AI is buggy (and I’ve seen The Terminator, so I know how that ends). But context does, indeed, matter. So, when you see me posting on FB and using creative euphemisms like “snap”, “do my thing” (or “thang”, as Stacy says), now you know why. FB will happily look the other way at the incessant half-naked women promoting their OnlyFans in the Reels section, but if a photographer uses the one word that best describes the activity they indulge in, then it’s three squares and a cot. Minus the three squares. And the cot.