You reference an eternal (and eternally valid) debate, namely one’s right to express oneself versus another’s right to not be exposed to material perceived to be upsetting. I am usually on your side of the camp, firmly believing that somebody’s right to be offended by what I express is entirely their problem and does not impinge upon me nor does it create an implicit obligation that I not offend them.
I do, however, draw a line when there is material circulating that normalises the rising trend of boys and young men using their cellphones to take unauthorised snapshots of women’s underwear and sometimes genitalia without their consent. Such photos would clearly violate Facebook’s Community Standards, but a cartoon does not?
My reference to them being “dirt” and being “two powerful” were separate sentences for a reason. I wanted there to be a bit of distance between the two statements. They are ‘dirt’ because they remove photos of breastfeeding mothers (probably the least offensive form of partial nudity one can think of, and the most natural thing in the world) as being somehow offensive, but they apparently they give this smut a free pass.
They’re too powerful because they have no competitors that could really supplant them. There’s plenty of alternative social networks to choose from, yes, but moving to a social media network without your contacts totally disrupts your habits. To a very real extent, we who use Facebook are a captive audience.
The irony of all this is that in less than an hour my account was reactivated and the cartoon was gone. I suspect I wasn’t the only person who reported it, perhaps multiple times each, and eventually Facebook had to capitulate and as a token of apology released me early from my suspension.
But think of that... in a working, democratic institution, you know what you are held guilty of, what the process is, and what the penalties might be. You get a chance to argue your case (or better still, have it argued for you). This is citizenship in a democracy with institutions. On Facebook, we’re all little serfs, and then there’s the feudal lord (the company itself) that gets to degree by fiat what is and what isn’t wrong (often not even bothering to explain the motivation so that it might become doctrine or at least a heuristic to use when making decisions) .
So in short, no: I am against more censorship by faceless incommunicado Facebook contractors sitting in their cubicles half way across the world with minimal pay. I the power to censor to be returned to the people.