How I Almost Got Sent To Facebook Jail

 

As a former radio and TV news anchor, I have a lot of Facebook friends who have either retired from the biz, been thrown under the bus by the biz, or are still actively employed in the broadcasting biz. A lot of us enjoy posting and sharing screen caps of bloopers like the one below.

Yesterday, a former colleague who still hosts a daily call-in talk show in the Midwest (and is a recovering radio news anchor) posted a question: what are some of your favorite headlines or teases? There were quite a few interesting responses, including this one posted by a friend who works for Fox Radio News.

The New York Post is a rich source for stuff like this, including one of my favorites. Years ago, when I was still an on-air radio news anchor during the hunt for Saddam Hussein, I’d write and deliver colorful stories about the effort to find him and bring him to justice.

One morning, the station’s consultant was monitoring my broadcast online from his east-coast home, and he sent me an e-mail saying, “saw this in the Post this morning and it reminded me of you.”

So, I posted this on the string of comments, saying it had always been one of my favorites – particularly the “warm up the virgins” line.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes after I posted it when I got a notification that someone else had posted something on the string. When I went to look at the post, Facebook instead popped up a screen telling me they had put a warning over the image I posted, saying it contained an explicit image that might be offensive.

I wish I’d had the presence of mind to grab a screen-shot of the warning, but I was too astounded by this to have my wits about me. What on earth was offensive about a picture of Saddam Hussein – originally published by a New York City newspaper?

After reading the warning, I clicked around on some other stuff on Facebook for a couple minutes. All of a sudden, I got another notification from Facebook that I was being officially warned that my post violated Facebook’s community standards (again, I wish I’d grabbed a screen cap of it) and I was prompted to scroll down to read more about these community standards. I was warned that if I did not agree to uphold these standards, my account would be temporarily suspended.

So, I clicked on the thingy that said, “I agree,” to avoid being sent to Facebook jail.

With all the absolutely bogus crap that makes in onto Facebook – the political, divisive, demonstrably false memes, the hateful screeds, the racist stuff – my post of a newspaper page from 2006 gets me a stern warning.

Wonderful.