Facebook has recently banned a woman from inviting other users to like her page, a memorial dedicated to her son who had been shot and killed.
The page was set up to remember the victim, and raise awareness of the case that is yet to see anybody being held accountable for the death, Charlotte-based FOX 46 is reporting.
The victim, Jonathan Swierski, was killed in July by a shooter using a shotgun, who then contacted the emergency services to say it was “an accident.”
The case is now under review but nobody has yet been arrested. To highlight the situation and create an online memorial for her son, his family, including his mother, Dawn Swierski, turned to Facebook.
But when she started sending invitations to her Facebook friends to like the page – the social giant would have none of it, revoking this right from her by imposing a one-week ban.
Swierski was unable to understand what community standards she had supposedly violated since she says she was reaching out only to people who were already her Facebook friends.
And when she attempted to seek the answers from the social media platform and correct the situation her appeal was rejected.
However, when FOX 46 got involved and made some inquiries, Facebook swiftly its reversed course, reinstating Swierski’s rights after determining that she did not violate any policies after all – and even apologizing, through a spokesperson.
“I would not have done it without you,” Swierski said, addressing the media outlet. And she is probably more right than she knows.
Once blocked – even for nonsensical or insignificant reasons, not to mention the politically charged issues that however don’t break community guidelines and rules – regular users usually little luck in reversing their bans on Facebook and reinstating their content.
As to who decided to block Swierski – algorithms or humans – the FOX 46 report does not reveal that information. But Facebook did offer this explanation as to why it happened, blaming its spam filters: the account was incorrectly blocked “because Facebook thought she violated the company’s spam policies, which prevents people from using misleading or inaccurate information to get likes, followers or shares.”
The tech behemoth also promised to work to stop the same problem from reoccurring – without saying what will be done to achieve this.
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