Church and State blog: Our problems with Facebook continue: They say I have shared a post that may be considered "insensitive or cruel" (WITH UPDATE 4/1/2017)

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Our problems with Facebook continue: They say I have shared a post that may be considered "insensitive or cruel" (WITH UPDATE 4/1/2017)

Bet the Pope has no trouble posting on FACEBOOK and his "insensitive or cruel" opposition to the use of safe voluntary methods of family planning including the right to abortions makes me wonder at the consistency of the criteria FACEBOOK uses to make its judgments. Of course FACEBOOK has such a right as a private service provider, but one can only point out that the diversity of views expressed by FACEBOOK users must include those which encompass family planning, whose availability helps avoid such "insensitive or cruel" moments in a woman's life when faced with an unwanted pregnancy which could have so easily been avoided with modern contraception. Go figure, FACEBOOK.

Donald A. Collins, President of ISAF, Washington DC

RE: Facebook

Following 17 Facebook blocks since 1 December 2015.

For the attention of Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Facebook:

31 December 2016

Dear Facebook,

This morning I couldn't gain access to your website without first getting past the following notice:

Your post was reported

Someone you've shared this post with reported it to us for review.

We've reviewed the post and found that it follows the Facebook Community standards, but may be considered insensitive or cruel. You may want to consider removing the post or limiting the audience you share posts like this with.

Please can you tell me what post I should review?

Yours faithfully,

Lola Heavey
Webmaster
Network for Church Monitoring

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Related blog post: Facebook's 17th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015 (WITH UPDATE - DAY 7 15/12/2016) This is a link to my blog post of 9 December. "Glad you compiled this odious record of mistaken blockage. What possesses the site? Surely after multiple postings they must know your content is neither lewd nor extreme," writes Don Collins, President of the International Services Assistance Fund, Washington, DC. Don often sends us material to publish on our Church and State website.

Facebook UK Managing Director Steve Hatch

Our 90 Honorary Associates include Nobel laureates Philip W. Anderson and the late Sir Harold Kroto. This month 19 notable scholars from around the world have given Declan permission to add their names to our list of associates.

UPDATE 4 January: Facebook still have not identified the post I shared that they say may be considered "insensitive or cruel". They never responded to any of the previous 17 block appeals I made this past year so I am not surprised really; in fact, to the best of our knowledge, Facebook UK Managing Director Steve Hatch never replied to Shadow Home Office Minister Lyn Brown (see her letter above). Perhaps the post Facebook is referring to is our Article of the Week that has received 1/2 million social recommends and 654 comments to date:

Cardinal Burke: Gay couples shouldn’t be invited to family gatherings if children are present

There can be no doubt that it is "insensitive or cruel" to say that gay couples shouldn't be invited to family gatherings if children are present. But I didn't say that. Cardinal Raymond Burke did!

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Our problems with Facebook continue: They say I have shared a post that may be considered "insensitive or cruel" (WITH UPDATE 4/1/2017)

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