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A couple of weeks ago, I noted some weird happenings on a Facebook account I follow, the great bass player Nathan East. Although you may not recognise the name, you will have heard a lot of his work. His was the bass line on Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, he is currently Eric Clapton’s go to bass man and he has played on records by the likes of Barry White, Michael Jackson, George Harrison, Elton John, The Bee Gees among others and even co-wrote Easy Lover, the big hit single from Phil Collins and Philip Bailey. Not that long ago, I saw him at the Hammersmith Apollo playing with Toto. East’s Facebook page is a lovely place to visit. Yet some totally bonkers, ugly hateful posts started appearing. East himself referred to it and urged people to report it to Facebook. So I did and I was not impressed by what happened next. Here’s what they said:
‘We didn’t remove the post
Rick, thanks again for your report. This information helps us reduce unwanted content for you and others.
We use a combination of technology and human reviewers to process reports and identify content that goes against our community standards. In this case, we did not remove the content that you reported.
If you think that we’ve made a mistake, you can request a review of this decision within 180 days.
We understand that this might be upsetting. If you want to see less of Nathan East on Facebook, you can unfollow or block them.’
So, here we have a Facebook account that has either been hacked or cloned, or even both, hateful poison appears under someone’s name and, following a review, likely carried out by AI, the posts have not been removed. It doesn’t go against their ‘community standards’. What kind of standards do they have, then?
Not too many, if recent events are anything to go by and certainly not high ones. In his brown-nosing of Donald Trump, along with the other so called Tech Bros, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg has already ended the need for fact-checking on his various platforms which also include Instagram and WhatsApp. The world of alternative facts, once regarded as a bit of a joke, has literally now become the world in which we live in.
I took up Facebook’s offer of requesting a review of their decision to allow someone to use someone else’s account, but I am not particularly hopeful. The platform’s, presumably deliberately, clunky navigation system merely allows me to ‘Request a review’ and that’s it. No requirement to provide evidence as to how an account has been abused. One button only. If I was a betting man, I would bet at least 10p that the review will not result in fake content being removed.
Alternatively, says Facebook, I can “see less of Nathan East … (and) can unfollow or block them”, which actually is not the point. I follow Nathan East because he is a great musician, an all round great bloke and his posts on the platform are invariably, at least until now, light-hearted, often kind and interesting. I don’t want to unfollow or block him.
The great unsaid, I fear, is that this is part of the post truth world of alternative facts, or lies as old fashioned folk like me call them. These days, Facebook is by and large a place for old folk to tell people who aren’t really their friends – spoiler alert: Facebook is not a real place – how great their lives are and here are some photos, especially gurning selfies, to prove it. But it appears it’s perfectly okay to pretend to be someone else to spread lies and hateful content.
I’ll stick with Facebook for the foreseeable future, but I’ll use it far less than I used to. I am just about capable of working out what is real and what’s make believe, although with some users it’s becoming increasingly difficult.
What a world we live in. Facebook started in 2004, as a social networking site for Harvard students. Last year, it had achieved over three billion users and recorded a profit of over $62 billion. Now that’s power for you and with Zuckerberg now in the pocket of Donald Trump, who is essentially a fascist dictator who is running the USA like a mobster, it’s worth paying attention to what you see on social networks.
When lying is the new truth, as it is in America, and was here when chief liar Boris Johnson was PM, we should be afraid. Very afraid.
