Facebook ‘sorry’ for deleting gay marriage post

YOU know you’ve hit a nerve with the world’s dominant social media company when it responds personally to your Facebook rant about, well, Facebook.

OPINION

YOU know you’ve hit a nerve with the world’s dominant social media company when it responds personally to your Facebook rant about, well, Facebook.

That’s what happened to John Dickson after he complained about the mysterious disappearance of his musings on the gay marriage debate — and the social network’s initial silence on the topic.

It all started when Mr Dickson, the co-founder and director of Centre for Public Christianity, decided to make what he imagined was a complex and nuanced, but respectful, point about the impact of politicking on the welfare of GLBTIQ young people.

His 500-word soliloquy — which steered clear of homophobic slurs and warned commenters to do likewise — raised the argument that, by painting traditional marriage advocates as spiteful homophobes, gay marriage campaigners may be inadvertently harming those whose rights they seek to uphold.

Say what?

That’s what Facebook’s team of faceless moderators seem to have thought when they reviewed Mr Dickson’s post.

Whoever was on duty deleted the post after it was, inevitably, reported as a potential breach of community standards, as the finer nuances of marriage traditionalists’ views flew over their heads.

While Telstra was flip-flopping over where it stands in the debate, Facebook — an unequivocal supporter of marriage equality — restored the post after former human rights commissioner Tim Wilson approached the company and accused it of dampening free speech, following a report in The Australian.

“They’ve given me no explanation,” Mr Dickson posted on Monday.

“All I know is that following a high level intervention (from someone who doesn’t share my views), Facebook reviewed my post and acknowledged they made an error. Bizarre.”

His followers were left to hypothesise on whether Facebook automatically removed posts subject to “a campaign of complaint”, or if the removal was “the decision of some overeager FB employee”.

It appears to be the latter; Facebook does not automatically remove posts that users flag as inappropriate, which are vetted around the clock by a team of specially trained reviewers.

The company itself responded to Mr Dickson’s post, writing: “Hey John — can you double check that you have not received an apology again? Happy to do it here as well — the comment was removed in error. Apologies.”

Well that solves that, then.

For the record, what the hell was Mr Dickson on about anyway?

Essentially, his argument goes, if you’re a young gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer or intersex Australian, you may internalise the idea that everyone hates you — thus harming your emotional wellbeing.

It’s the kind of abstract philosophising that takes place when some Christians struggle to reconcile the values of tolerance, love and kindness with their stance on contemporary marriage.

“My fear is that by heightening the tone of the debate and reiterating the hatred which classical marriage advocates allegedly have for the LGBTI community, it is advocates of gay marriage themselves who are unwittingly entrenching in young gay and lesbian men and women the sense that there is something wrong with them, that there is a whole segment of Australian society that despises them and sees them as second-class citizens,” Mr Dickson wrote.

“In short, isn’t it possible that gay marriage advocates’ frequent claims of being a despised minority are exacerbating feelings of being hated among LGBTI youth?”

It’s kind of like saying that not everyone who advocates racial segregation hates people of colour, and that to claim so could put minority groups at risk of internalised racism.

In the interests of free speech, we’ll leave that one for the Queer Theory undergrads, marriage equality campaigners and painfully conflicted Christians to work out among themselves. On Facebook.

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Originally published as Facebook ‘sorry’ for deleting gay marriage post