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Facebook while black: Users call it getting 'Zucked,' say talking about racism is censored as hate speech
Jessica Guynn, USA TODAYPublished 7:26 a.m. ET April 24, 2019 | Updated 3:02 p.m. ET April 24, 2019
Carolyn Wysinger is a teacher and activist who says Facebook censors her from discussing racism online, sometimes locking her out of her account. USA TODAY
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Martin Luther King Jr. and Che Guevaraand a "Resist Patriarchy" sign, was piled high with colorful rolls of poster paper, the whiteboard covered with plans for pep rallies.
A post from poet Shawn William caught her eye. "On the day that Trayvon would've turned 24, Liam Neeson is going on national talk shows trying to convince the world that he is not a racist." While promoting a revenge movie, the Hollywood actor confessed that decades earlier, after a female friend told him she'd been raped by a black man she could not identify, he'd roamed the streets hunting for black men to harm.
For Wysinger, an activist whose podcast The C-Dubb Show frequently explores anti-black racism, the troubling episode recalled the nation's dark history of lynching, when charges of sexual violence against a white woman were used to justify mob murders of black men.
"White men are so fragile," she fired off, sharing William's post with her friends, "and the mere presence of a black person challenges every single thing in them."
It took just 15 minutes for Facebook to delete her post for violating its community standards for hate speech. And she was warned if she posted it again, she'd be banned for 72 hours.
Wysinger glared at her phone, but wasn't surprised. She says black people can't talk about racism on Facebook without risking having their posts removed and being locked out of their accounts in a punishment commonly referred to as "Facebook jail." For Wysinger, the Neeson post was just another example of Facebook arbitrarily deciding that talking about racism is racist.
"It is exhausting," she says, "and it drains you emotionally."
Black activists say hate speech policies and content moderation systems formulated by a company built by and dominated by white men fail the very people Facebook claims it's trying to protect. Not only are the voices of marginalized groups disproportionately stifled, Facebook rarely takes action on repeated reports of racial slurs, violent threats and harassment campaigns targeting black users, they say.
Many of these users now think twice before posting updates on Facebook or they limit how widely their posts are shared. Yet few can afford to leave the single-largest and most powerful social media platform for sharing information and creating community.
So to avoid being flagged, they use digital slang such as "wypipo," emojis or hashtags to elude Facebook's computer algorithms and content moderators. They operate under aliases and maintain back-up accounts to avoid losing content and access to their community. And they've developed a buddy system to alert friends and followers when a fellow black activist has been sent to Facebook jail, sharing the news of the suspension and the posts that put them there.
They call it getting "Zucked" and black activists say these bans have serious repercussions, not just cutting people off from their friends and family for hours, days or weeks at a time, but often from the Facebook pages they operate for their small businesses and nonprofits.
called out Facebook for how it treats black users and black employees. "One of the platform's most engaged demographics and an unmatched cultural trendsetter is having their community divided by the actions and inaction of the company," he wrote in a Facebook post. "This loss is a direct reflection of the staffing and treatment of many of its black employees."
Facebook deleted his post, then hours later said it “took another look” and restored it.
'Black people are punished on Facebook'
"Black people are punished on Facebook for speaking directly to the racism we have experienced," says Seattle black anti-racism consultant and conceptual artist Natasha Marin.
Marin says she's one of Facebook's biggest fans. She created a "reparations" fund that's aided a quarter million people with small donations to get elderly folks transportation to medical appointments or to pay for prescriptions, to help single moms afford groceries or the rent or to get supplies for struggling new parents. More recently, she started a social media project spreading "black joy" rather than black trauma.
She was also banned by Facebook for three days for posting a screenshot of a racist message she received.
"For me as a black woman, this platform has allowed me to say and do things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do," she says. "Facebook is also a place that has allowed things like death threats against me and my children. And Facebook is responsible for the fact that I am completely desensitized to the N-word.”
Seven out of 10 black U.S. adults use Facebook and 43 percent use Instagram, according to the Pew Research Center. And black millennials are even more engaged on social media. More than half – 55 percent – of black millennials spend at least one hour a day on social media, 6 percent higher than all millennials, while 29 percent say they spend at least three hours a day, nine percent higher than millennials, Nielsen surveys found.
rise of #BlackLivesMatter and other hashtag movements show how vital social media platforms have become for civil rights activists. About half of black users turn to social media to express their political views or to get involved in issues that are important to them, according to the Pew Research Center.
These hashtag movements, coming against the backdrop of an upsurge in hate crimes, have helped put the deaths of unarmed African Americans by police officers on the public agenda, along with racial disparities in employment, health and other key areas.
"If I were to sit down with Mark Zuckerberg, the message I would want to get across to him is: You may not even realize how powerful a thing you have created. Entire revolutions could take place on this platform. Global change could happen. But that can’t happen if real people can’t take part," Marin says. "The challenge for these companies is to see black women as valuable resources. This is the wealth on the platform, the people pushing the platform forward. If anything, they should be supported. There should be policies and community standards that overtly support that kind of work. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg needs to sit down with a bunch of black women who use Facebook and just listen."
How Facebook judges what speech is hateful
For years, Facebook was widely celebrated as a platform that empowered people to bypass mainstream media or oppressive governments to directly tell their story. Now, in the eyes of some, it has assumed the role of censor.
With more than a quarter of the world's population on Facebook, the social media giant says it's wrestling with its unprecedented power to judge what speech is hateful.
including a mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand, recently forced Facebook to reckon with the scourge of white nationalist content on its platform. "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech," Zuckerberg wrote, "and frankly I agree."
In late 2017 and early 2018, Facebook explored whether certain groups should be afforded more protection than others. For now, the company has decided to maintain its policy of protecting all racial and ethnic groups equally, even if they do not face oppression or marginalization, says Neil Potts, public policy director at Facebook. Applying more "nuanced" rules to the daily tidal wave of content rushing through Facebook and its other apps would be very challenging, he says.
Potts acknowledges that Facebook doesn't always read the room correctly, confusing advocacy and commentary on racism and white complicity in anti-blackness with attacks on a protected group of people. Facebook is looking into ways to identify when oppressed or marginalized users are "speaking to power," Potts says. And it's conducting ongoing research into the experiences of the black community on its platform.
"That's, on its face, the type of speech we want to encourage, but words and people aren't perfect, so it doesn't always come across as that. We are exploring additional refinements to our hate speech policy that will perhaps help remedy some of these situations," he says.
more intersectional, form of feminism.
shut down the video of a Baltimore woman, Korryn Gaines, who was live-streaming her standoff with police. Gaines was later shot and killed by a police officer in front of her 5-year-old son who was also struck twice by gunfire. At the same time, Black Lives Matter activists and Standing Rock pipeline protesters in North Dakota were reporting that their content was being removed, too.
agreed to an audit as it was trying to control the damage from revelations that a shadowy Russian organization posing as Americans had targeted unsuspecting users with divisive political messages to sow discord surrounding the 2016 presidential election. One of the main targets of the Internet Research Agency on Facebook were African Americans. The same day Facebook gave in to demands from civil rights groups, it announced a second audit into allegations of anti-conservative bias led by former Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican.
Jessica Guynn, USA TODAYPublished 7:26 a.m. ET April 24, 2019 | Updated 3:02 p.m. ET April 24, 2019
Carolyn Wysinger is a teacher and activist who says Facebook censors her from discussing racism online, sometimes locking her out of her account. USA TODAY
CONNECTTWEETLINKEDINCOMMENTEMAILMORE
Martin Luther King Jr. and Che Guevaraand a "Resist Patriarchy" sign, was piled high with colorful rolls of poster paper, the whiteboard covered with plans for pep rallies.
A post from poet Shawn William caught her eye. "On the day that Trayvon would've turned 24, Liam Neeson is going on national talk shows trying to convince the world that he is not a racist." While promoting a revenge movie, the Hollywood actor confessed that decades earlier, after a female friend told him she'd been raped by a black man she could not identify, he'd roamed the streets hunting for black men to harm.
For Wysinger, an activist whose podcast The C-Dubb Show frequently explores anti-black racism, the troubling episode recalled the nation's dark history of lynching, when charges of sexual violence against a white woman were used to justify mob murders of black men.
"White men are so fragile," she fired off, sharing William's post with her friends, "and the mere presence of a black person challenges every single thing in them."
It took just 15 minutes for Facebook to delete her post for violating its community standards for hate speech. And she was warned if she posted it again, she'd be banned for 72 hours.
Wysinger glared at her phone, but wasn't surprised. She says black people can't talk about racism on Facebook without risking having their posts removed and being locked out of their accounts in a punishment commonly referred to as "Facebook jail." For Wysinger, the Neeson post was just another example of Facebook arbitrarily deciding that talking about racism is racist.
"It is exhausting," she says, "and it drains you emotionally."
Black activists say hate speech policies and content moderation systems formulated by a company built by and dominated by white men fail the very people Facebook claims it's trying to protect. Not only are the voices of marginalized groups disproportionately stifled, Facebook rarely takes action on repeated reports of racial slurs, violent threats and harassment campaigns targeting black users, they say.
Many of these users now think twice before posting updates on Facebook or they limit how widely their posts are shared. Yet few can afford to leave the single-largest and most powerful social media platform for sharing information and creating community.
So to avoid being flagged, they use digital slang such as "wypipo," emojis or hashtags to elude Facebook's computer algorithms and content moderators. They operate under aliases and maintain back-up accounts to avoid losing content and access to their community. And they've developed a buddy system to alert friends and followers when a fellow black activist has been sent to Facebook jail, sharing the news of the suspension and the posts that put them there.
They call it getting "Zucked" and black activists say these bans have serious repercussions, not just cutting people off from their friends and family for hours, days or weeks at a time, but often from the Facebook pages they operate for their small businesses and nonprofits.
called out Facebook for how it treats black users and black employees. "One of the platform's most engaged demographics and an unmatched cultural trendsetter is having their community divided by the actions and inaction of the company," he wrote in a Facebook post. "This loss is a direct reflection of the staffing and treatment of many of its black employees."
Facebook deleted his post, then hours later said it “took another look” and restored it.
'Black people are punished on Facebook'
"Black people are punished on Facebook for speaking directly to the racism we have experienced," says Seattle black anti-racism consultant and conceptual artist Natasha Marin.
Marin says she's one of Facebook's biggest fans. She created a "reparations" fund that's aided a quarter million people with small donations to get elderly folks transportation to medical appointments or to pay for prescriptions, to help single moms afford groceries or the rent or to get supplies for struggling new parents. More recently, she started a social media project spreading "black joy" rather than black trauma.
She was also banned by Facebook for three days for posting a screenshot of a racist message she received.
"For me as a black woman, this platform has allowed me to say and do things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do," she says. "Facebook is also a place that has allowed things like death threats against me and my children. And Facebook is responsible for the fact that I am completely desensitized to the N-word.”
Seven out of 10 black U.S. adults use Facebook and 43 percent use Instagram, according to the Pew Research Center. And black millennials are even more engaged on social media. More than half – 55 percent – of black millennials spend at least one hour a day on social media, 6 percent higher than all millennials, while 29 percent say they spend at least three hours a day, nine percent higher than millennials, Nielsen surveys found.
rise of #BlackLivesMatter and other hashtag movements show how vital social media platforms have become for civil rights activists. About half of black users turn to social media to express their political views or to get involved in issues that are important to them, according to the Pew Research Center.
These hashtag movements, coming against the backdrop of an upsurge in hate crimes, have helped put the deaths of unarmed African Americans by police officers on the public agenda, along with racial disparities in employment, health and other key areas.
"If I were to sit down with Mark Zuckerberg, the message I would want to get across to him is: You may not even realize how powerful a thing you have created. Entire revolutions could take place on this platform. Global change could happen. But that can’t happen if real people can’t take part," Marin says. "The challenge for these companies is to see black women as valuable resources. This is the wealth on the platform, the people pushing the platform forward. If anything, they should be supported. There should be policies and community standards that overtly support that kind of work. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg needs to sit down with a bunch of black women who use Facebook and just listen."
How Facebook judges what speech is hateful
For years, Facebook was widely celebrated as a platform that empowered people to bypass mainstream media or oppressive governments to directly tell their story. Now, in the eyes of some, it has assumed the role of censor.
With more than a quarter of the world's population on Facebook, the social media giant says it's wrestling with its unprecedented power to judge what speech is hateful.
including a mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand, recently forced Facebook to reckon with the scourge of white nationalist content on its platform. "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech," Zuckerberg wrote, "and frankly I agree."
In late 2017 and early 2018, Facebook explored whether certain groups should be afforded more protection than others. For now, the company has decided to maintain its policy of protecting all racial and ethnic groups equally, even if they do not face oppression or marginalization, says Neil Potts, public policy director at Facebook. Applying more "nuanced" rules to the daily tidal wave of content rushing through Facebook and its other apps would be very challenging, he says.
Potts acknowledges that Facebook doesn't always read the room correctly, confusing advocacy and commentary on racism and white complicity in anti-blackness with attacks on a protected group of people. Facebook is looking into ways to identify when oppressed or marginalized users are "speaking to power," Potts says. And it's conducting ongoing research into the experiences of the black community on its platform.
"That's, on its face, the type of speech we want to encourage, but words and people aren't perfect, so it doesn't always come across as that. We are exploring additional refinements to our hate speech policy that will perhaps help remedy some of these situations," he says.
more intersectional, form of feminism.
shut down the video of a Baltimore woman, Korryn Gaines, who was live-streaming her standoff with police. Gaines was later shot and killed by a police officer in front of her 5-year-old son who was also struck twice by gunfire. At the same time, Black Lives Matter activists and Standing Rock pipeline protesters in North Dakota were reporting that their content was being removed, too.
agreed to an audit as it was trying to control the damage from revelations that a shadowy Russian organization posing as Americans had targeted unsuspecting users with divisive political messages to sow discord surrounding the 2016 presidential election. One of the main targets of the Internet Research Agency on Facebook were African Americans. The same day Facebook gave in to demands from civil rights groups, it announced a second audit into allegations of anti-conservative bias led by former Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican.
