A Detroit woman said she was temporarily banished from Facebook for “hate speech” after participating in a time-honored tradition: commenting on a meme labeling the opposite sex as “dumb.”
“At first I thought it was a joke [and] I’m like yeah right I’m blocked … what?” Candace King told Fox News of her social media timeout, which allegedly occurred after she participated in a thread entitled “why men are so dumb.”
The Facebook topic initially focused on how women will notice a difference in two different shades of purple — but quickly devolved into a discussion over mens’ purported inability to differentiate nuanced shades.
“I posted on there ‘this is a different color, why are men so stupid’ and then five seconds later, the comment just disappeared and I was like what’s going on,” claimed an aghast King.
The flummoxed Facebook user received a subsequent notification from Facebook claimed that her comment didn’t adhere to community standards, whereupon she was banned from the platform for 24 hours, Fox News reported.
King found her Facebook house arrest pretty ludicrous as she’s seen “way worse than something silly like that — about nail polish,” attested the exile social media trustee. She later insisted that she was not a man hater.
Unfortunately, Facebook defines “hate speech” as a “direct attack against people — rather than concepts or institutions — on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease,” per the guidelines.
Meanwhile, King chalks up her social media scarlet lettering to Facebook’s automated reviewing process.
“I feel like it’s a comment in jest and maybe if an actual person was reviewing this stuff, it might not,” she said. “But I think most of it is just with Facebook algorithms.”
And while Facebook does allow people to dispute their punishment, King claims that “when you click it, it says that due to COVID that they don’t really have anybody reviewing it.”
King said she was reinstated on the social media site by Friday. However, it would behoove her to curate her comments in the future as “I got the warning that if I do it again, the punishment will be more severe,” she claimed.
Reps for Facebook did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has been flamed over their heavy-handed anti-hate speech measures.
Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants, including Twitter and Google, have been under fire over how they policed conservative commentary during the election — including Twitter’s decision to lock the New York Post’s account for two weeks.