Sexy Onions and Freedom of Expression

Is this story even worthy of mention?  Not in isolation, probably, although Curmie did post it to the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page.  But taken in context… maybe.

Veteran readers of this blog, and especially of the Facebook page, will know that links to this blog were blocked on Facebook for nearly a year, sometimes with the message that the page violated their rules about spamming (needless to say, Curmie doesn’t engage in spamming), sometimes with just a blithe and unhelpful message about violation of their precious “community standards.”

Curmie wrote about his frustration with the situation in a post last July.  What’s really troubling is that there is no way to appeal an idiotic edict generated by whatever ill-conceived algorithm has taken the place of sense in the world of BigTech.  And now, just as mysteriously, Curmie can post links to this blog again.  Don’t ask why.  Curmie doesn’t know, and if Facebook does, they won’t say.

All of this, of course, both feeds into and complicates the narrative.  That Facebook and Twitter are, to repeat the title of Curmie’s previous rant, censorious asshats, is tautological.  But are they the partisan authoritarians some of Curmie’s right-leaning friends suggest, or are they just fucking stupid?  They’re certainly the latter, as demonstrated below. 

The former?  Well, links to this blog were shut down, and whereas Curmie may not be a traditional liberal, it would be difficult to describe him as a right-winger.  And over a dozen of Curmie’s friends have been put in Facebook jail for posting leftie content.  Did they deserve it?  A couple of them, perhaps.  But Curmie can’t imagine some of them posting anything that would be deemed problematic by anyone with an operative brain.

Moreover, a lot of the problem seems to stem from unreasonable demands placed on social media corporations: they seem to be held liable for anything they allow to remain on their sites, but also get into trouble for restricting access.  This dilemma doesn’t make them blameless, of course.  For one thing, they can’t seem to maintain a consistent set of rules.  When Curmie wrote the post linked above, politicians running for office could lie in Facebook posts all they wanted, but the rest of us got dinged if some idiot fact-checker decided that a literally true statement didn’t provide enough context.

Then they got rid of that idea and started limiting all political content.  Then they brought it back.  Now, lest their site be used to disseminate falsehoods (e.g., about COVID) they’ve taken to asking users “Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?”  This neat little merger of Orwell, Kafka, and the Stasi is intended, they tell us, to prevent the spread of extremism.  On this Independence Day, do we really need a reminder that John Hancock was an extremist?  Or that he was only one of the multitude of great figures in world history to whom that term could be applied?

It’s also reasonable to flag a particular post with a warning that there is factually incorrect information there.  But such designations should not lead to taking the post down unless it is libelous or incites violence.  Calling the President names doesn’t qualify.  Saying the last election was “stolen” doesn’t, either, despite the dearth of evidence to support such a claim.  Nor do wildly exaggerated claims that no rational person would believe… or jokes that aren’t supposed to be taken seriously.

Are the BigTech companies imposing political homogeneity?  Maybe.  Are their motives pure, even if their actions are flawed?  Maybe.  Are the people running the process card-carrying morons?  Yes.  Of course, being dumber than the proverbial sack of hair does not necessarily preclude also being partisan.  As one of Curmie’s students is fond of saying, ¿Por qué no los dos?

But on to the actual subject of this post, a subject about which Curmie believes we can all agree.  It isn’t a new story, but it only recently appeared on Curmie’s horizon, and it encapsulates what is wrong with all the multitudinous attempts to squelch freedom of expression by the very people who purport to be cultivating it.

Last fall, the Gaze Seed Company in St. John’s, Newfoundland sought to buy an ad on Facebook, promoting their Walla Walla onions.  Curiously enough, the company included a photograph of what the grown onions would look like.  The photo was deemed “overtly sexualized” by, presumably, a remarkably prudish algorithm.  You can see the evidence here.

Gentle Reader, if you find anything remotely suggestive in what you see here, Curmie would suggest the only career path available to you is high school administration, where you can get over-stimulated by the sight of teenaged girls’ shoulders or collarbones.

The situation was ultimately resolved, and the ad ran.  But that’s because Facebook represents the quintessence of capitalist amorality.  If you or I, Gentle Reader, post a meme the maladroit algorithm doesn’t like, it’s gone, and your account is imperiled.  But if you’re paying them for an ad, well, yeah, of course they’ll have a real human take a look.  They’re still morons.

The desire to control false or otherwise disruptive content is understandable up to a point, but we’re well past the point of idiocy.  BigTech’s censorious asshattery would be problematic enough if the decisions were made by someone smarter than moose scat.  Curmie doesn’t see that happening in the foreseeable future.