Thought Police

 

Many of my left-leaning friends have posted on Facebook over the past few weeks expressing their delight that Donald Trump had his Twitter and YouTube accounts frozen or cancelled.  Since they have all posted stuff over the past few years making it clear that they thought he was an abomination, I suppose their glee is understandable, but it comes with a price.  

Right wing commentators and news outlets have been warning that such actions would come back to bite them in the butt, and it seems that it is already happening.  At least three of the folks on the left fringe of my social circle have fallen prey to the "Thought Police" and spent time in "Facebook Jail" in the last couple of weeks - banned for comments that were really pretty benign.  One of them was banned for a post that simply said that a woman could not be equipped with a penis!

The latest Facebook victim was the co-administrator of my Addicted to Limericks group.  As the groups admin, I was informed that one of her posts had been removed for violating public decency standards, and that any such violations by an administrator could lead to cancellation of the entire group.  This is the same administrator who, when I posted a warning to a member saying Risqué was Ok but Obscenity would not be tolerated, removed the post and banned the writer. 

Just what did she do to generate Facebook's ire?  In response to a post that mentioned nudity, she posted a picture of a group of African men sitting in front of their hut.  You could tell that they weren't wearing much, but that's about it.  It was the sort of picture that used to be common in National Geographic. It would take a seriously disturbed mind to label the picture as obscene.