DCT – Facebook Update – January 2022

I first highlighted this outrageous situation on 24th November 2021 in Facebook Bans Links To Dave’s Computer Tips and nearly two months later the censor hammer is still in place. Collectively we writers at DCT have submitted tickets to Facebook’s so-called help desk on numerous occasions since the censorship began, without receiving even the courtesy of a reply. Not even an acknowledgment of receipt has been forthcoming, so we find ourselves in a stalemate with no obvious solution in sight.

Facebook Simply Doesn’t Care About You

As I mentioned in my two previous articles on this debacle, love or loathe it, social media is so widely used by the world at large that we simply cannot ignore it. Even community forums are feeling the pinch, making it hard to compete with the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These companies have the power to silence whoever they wish, up to and including current and past presidents of The United States of America. DCT is not a political forum, so I only mention this fact for perspective to illustrate the kind of power that is wielded, not only by the big three social media platforms but also by the other dominant tech companies such as Google and Microsoft.

To say that I’m angry about this censorship would be an understatement. Not because I have any affection for social media companies, because I certainly don’t. But because Dave’s Computer Tips is being treated so shabbily by Facebook. That fact assumes that a human at Facebook even knows of DCT’s existence of course, strange as that may sound. But as I have said already, social media and its operations are driven largely by algorithms that are not even sentient or human. I’d better point out here that DCT per se hasn’t been banned by Facebook, as has happened to some notable figures, but instead has been censored and accused of abusive behaviour. The Facebook page for DCT  can still be reached, but any and all URLs for our articles cannot be published because a pop-up tells you so.

I’m angry because any semblance of decency from this billion-dollar corporation is simply non-existent. It gives you a free platform in return for harvesting your personal data, provided you play within the rules built into its algorithms. It really is as simple as that. However, it’s impossible to solve a Rubik’s Cube if all the squares are the same colour, in the same way, that we cannot surmount Facebook’s perceived problem if we don’t know what the problem is.

Perhaps I’m also angry because a faceless, authoritarian entity has seen fit to silence a perfectly respectable tech blog with no recourse to action whatsoever. Perhaps because of my strict boarding school upbringing I’ve become an anarchist? Who knows? But this kind of behavior is like a red rag to a bull for me and I do not intend to give up on the issue, but will continue to pressure Facebook into a climb-down however long that takes.

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