Facebook Flagged a Story About 'The Matrix': You Decide If It Runs Afoul of Community Standards
On Wednesday, our humble outlet produced a story covering the announcement for a somewhat surprising fifth movie in the Matrix media franchise.
It was, by all accounts, a straightforward story about how it’s both surprising (due to the lackluster performance of the fourth Matrix movie) and unsurprising (due to Hollywood’s infatuation with sequels and “cinematic universes”) that Warner Bros. Discovery was making a fifth movie.
That story then also mentions how the fifth Matrix movie will be the first without either Wachowski sibling directing it, as well as the fact that they are both men who identify as women.
The story was published and it didn’t take long (less than 24 hours) for Facebook to flag the post for… reasons that are still difficult to decipher.
The piece, which went out with the headline of “5th Matrix Movie Announced Despite Disastrous 4th Movie, Transgender Director Replaced,” was flagged for being “unsafe.”
(If you are so inclined, feel free to read the offending piece here.)
Again: What is “unsafe” about this post?
It’s certainly not the fact that a fifth Matrix movie was announced, nor could it be calling the fourth movie “disastrous” given that the movie is, unequivocally, that.
That just leaves the transgender part, which is, again, treated about as apolitically as possible in both the headline and body.
Here is everything, verbatim, that this author wrote about the Wachowski siblings:
“So yes, it’s both a surprise and not a surprise at all that a fifth Matrix movie was officially announced, but it’s worth noting that there will be at least one key difference between the fifth Matrix movie and all of its predecessors: Neither Wachowski sibling will be involved with the film.
“The Wachowskis (two brothers who identify as women) have been involved with the franchise since its inception in 1999 with the original ‘The Matrix’ film that became a massive smash hit. Lana and Lilly Wachowski were formerly known as Larry and Andy, respectively.
“Both Wachowskis worked on ‘The Matrix,’ ‘The Matrix Reloaded,’ and ‘The Matrix Revolutions.’ Only the elder Wachowski (Lana/Larry) was involved in the poorly received fourth movie.
“While the elder Wachowski is still a part of this still-unnamed fifth Matrix movie, the role will simply be as an executive producer.”
*Insert Shrugging Man Emoji*
Does Big Brother Zuck really think that the mere acknowledgment of transgenderism is “unsafe”?
Out of morbid curiosity, this writer tracked down Facebook’s official “Hate Speech” policy to see what, exactly, this story had run afoul of.
The most recent version of the policy lists a number of points, but the above story appears to have neither clearly nor obviously violated any of them.
The policy states: “We define hate speech as direct attacks against people — rather than concepts or institutions— on the basis of what we call protected characteristics (PCs): race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease.”
Setting aside the nauseating term “protected characteristics” for a minute, there is absolutely no hate (or even hateful) speech directed at anyone in the offending story.
The closest this story appears to come to violating Facebook’s policy may be the use of “Transgender (insert any noun) Replaced” in the headline, due to this little snippet from Facebook’s hate speech policy: “We define a hate speech attack as dehumanizing speech; statements of inferiority, expressions of contempt or disgust; cursing; and calls for exclusion or segregation. “
If you want to squint really hard, you can almost see the loosest connection between “exclusion” and “replaced,” but that’s far from a slam dunk.
Even this policy bullet point, which usually nails people on allegations of transphobia, fails to make a dent in the offending story: “Statements denying existence (including but not limited to: “[protected characteristic(s) or quasi-protected characteristic] do not exist”, “no such thing as [protected charactic(s) or quasi-protected characteristic]” or “[protected characteristic(s) or quasi-protected characteristic] shouldn’t exist”).”
Again: Did “5th Matrix Movie Announced Despite Disastrous 4th Movie, Transgender Director Replaced” violate a single Facebook policy?
We tried to reach out to Facebook for comment but their byzantine labyrinth of unhelpful “help” articles made the task virtually impossible.
One final (absurd) note: Lo and behold, it turns out that Facebook removed the flag on the story after the headline was changed to remove any mention of “transgender.”
Go figure.
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