---
title: Facebook censors links to Mastodon
date: 2021-09-12
lang: en
categories: [ blog, rant ]
tags: [ facebook, censor, mastodon ]
translationKey: "facebook-censoring-mastodon"
---

On Facebook, toxic comments that dehumanize and wishing death on a large group
of people are "not violating our Community Standards".  Posts that [introduce
to friends some decent software][masto-ban], are.

[masto-ban]: https://fosstodon.org/@huy_ngo/106917212298115694

## I am not alone

As I started writing this post, I found out that [someone else named John
Goerzen][jg] had the same experience as me: post removals due to a link to
Mastodon's page, with no option to appeal!
From the comment of the post, I found another fedizen with username
[yhancik][yh] experiencing the same problem.  On [John's post on his
Mastodon account][jg-social], there is a reply claiming the same problem
happened when he mentions Diaspora, and another reply mentioning his shadowban
from Twitter (ha, Facebook is not alone either).

[jg]: https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10285-facebook-censored-me-for-mentioning-open-source-social-network-mastodon
[jg-social]: https://floss.social/@jgoerzen/106916230772511960
[yh]: https://octodon.social/@yhancik/106897948169079191

## Why?

They claim this (a post inviting people to join the fediverse, with detailed
explanation) is *spam*.  They claim that this is to prevent things like *false
advertising*, *fraud* (they allowed advertisements of counterfeit cash and
false ads of mobile games, the latter of which is an infamous phenomenon), and
*security breaches* (need I to say, Facebook *is* the security breaches).

Irony[^0] asides, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they
actually used some automatic tools to do it to curb spams, then there is no
reason not to allow appellation.  As a data mining company, Facebook should
know better than anyone else that machine decision based on data, so-called
"artificial intelligence" (a more appropriate term is "artificial stupidity")
is never reliable.  The decision to ban mention of Mastodon therefore seems
deliberate.  Hence my rather proofless claim in my Mastodon post.

[^0]: I would like to thank my anonymous friend who pointed out to me the
  irony that I should've realized earlier

Some people pointed out how ridiculuous that claim is: Mastodon, and even the
whole Fediverse, is insignificant compared to Facebook.  I agree with that.
However, the hypothesis is totally convincing if you consider that they
wouldn't want to let users know what a ***free***[^1] social media is like.

[^1]: Free in both <i>freedom</i> and <i>free of charge</i>.  Facebook is as a
  free service to its useds as dairy manufacturers to cows.

## Respect yourself, say "no" to disservices

Censorship is far from the only injustice Facebook et al have done.
Dr. Stallman has compiled [a list of reasons to to be used by Facebook][rms-fb].
I was trapped there with the reasons of keeping contact with my friends, though
this is more of a <abbr title="fear of missing out">FOMO</abbr>: I have their
emails and telephone numbers to contact with, even if they're not willing to
move to a more ethical and secure platform.

The reason I deleted <i>Windows</i> from my machine and switched to Linux was
the same: I would be disrespecting myself if I keep using those
disservices[^2].  For the same reason, quitting Facebook is the only sensible
choice.  Would you make the same decision?

[rms-fb]: https://stallman.org/facebook.html

[^2]: Before some pedant pointing out <i>Windows</i> is not a service, I would
  say that [using something without owning it][win-tos] is some kind of hiring
  service.

[win-tos]: https://www.igel.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/EULA-WIN.pdf