I am with Julia on this one but as I am not on Facebook (and that is not what I call it in private) and never have been or never will be it hardly matters...... Whilst I understand the attraction of increased communication with a variety of folks via the internet the apparent volume of misinformation and ignorant stuff on this and similar platforms just leaves me preferring more closely moderated platforms such as this one. Thank you to our moderators for monitoring the input here.
The gist of it is that your Facebook posts can be repressed from view by everyone but you without them telling you. So when you look at your account, all of the stuff you posted is there...but no one else can see it. You are not made aware that this has been done...everything seems normal to you. The only way you might notice is if there is usually a high number of traffic and comments on your posts, but for some of your comments there are none. Functionally, your comments may as well have been deleted. In fact, it would be more honest to delete them, because then you would know they have been repressed. If I am understanding it correctly, "Shadow Banning" is a sneaky, deceitful, dishonest practice.
I have now heard reports that Gmail is suppressing "misinformation" contained in emails sent from a Gmail account. They are reportedly using AI to screen the content. Gmail has long been reported to be storing copies of attachments (not necessarily the email itself) sent on their platform, but no one knows why or what they are being used for. I have a Gmail account but never use it due to security concerns.
I've never heard of that but it doesn't suprise me.I have heard that Gmail hangs on to things because of child pornography but that's in Canada Mr.Alaska.
I suspect child pornography is just the cover story. The UK is now trying to get a bill passed that would allow the government to screen everyone's social media and email "to protect the children". Just an excuse to surveil everyone in 1984 fashion.
I have a comment about the Nextdoor forum and don't feel like starting a specific thread for it... I signed up for it under deceitful practices. I entered my address and it said "Sign up to read about auto thefts in your neighborhood." I knew there had been no such thing, but I signed up anyway. I only go there when I get the random email telling me that there is a comment I might be interested in. It's mostly people wetting their pants about 1st World Problems. Every once in a while I might chime in with some comment that they need to be grateful that this is the worse thing on their radar screen. I've never started a thread. So I was surprised when I got this email last week from the Nextdoor team: Based on your interactions with neighbors on Nextdoor, we think you'd be a great fit on the Review Team for Zion Crossroad. The Review Team helps ensure conversations in your neighborhood are respectful, and adhere to the community guidelines. You are already doing it and won't need to do anything different. Would you like to help out? You can always opt-out too! We hope you'll join us! I think I've annoyed more people than I've befriended. They must be real hard up for help.
Facebook is probably a lot more helpful if you want to actually know about things being stolen in you area. At least here, we have a special facebook group to report cars (and any other items) that have been stolen, and people can post information and pictures, so others in the area can watch for the stolen vehicle. I totally stopped all of my Nextdoor alerts, all I was seeing were people complaining that the neighbors dog got loose and was running down the street or barking at people. Or that their neighbor came home late at night and the car lights shined in their bedroom window. Stuff like that.
Yup. "Some guy rode his loud motorcycle by my house at 10AM on a Wednesday!!!" And I've seen folks cross-post the stolen vehicle stuff to that Facebook group, mostly from crime in Charlottesville (about 1/2hour up the road.)
I was briefly on Nextdoor but most of the alerts were irrelevant or too far away to be meaningful. My wife is on a Facebook group What's Important in our area and knows the admin. It covers accidents, traffic issues, fires, and significant crimes and has been very helpful to us. I also have a scanner that I turn on when I hear sirens to see if there is something significant there. The fire and ambulance frequencies are not coded, but law enforcement is.
There's a way to geographically narrow down the posts you get, but the site is so horribly constructed I couldn't tell you how to do it. I like to hear of what's going on in the region, but there is so much stupidity to sift through it's barely worth it. Just yesterday a woman was slamming this guy who put up a post looking for odd jobs: gutter cleaning, dog walking, yard work, etc. She hired him to do yard work, and while he was there she asked him to prune her trees. She gave him a saw and he pruned her trees. Now she thinks he killed them. "I don't think he knows what he's doing." LOL. I reminded her that he was just some guy looking to make pocket money and not a certified arborist, and she accused me of calling her a liar. Someone had to stand up for the guy.
There was that option on another forum that I once ran, using a different forum script. When a troll came into the forum, I could set the troll's account so that only the troll, moderators, and administrator could view their posts. If a moderator quoted their post so as to reply, the reply would also not be visible to anyone other than the troll, the administrator, and the moderators. So, if I wanted to try to convert the troll into a forum participant, I could reply to their posts, explaining why this was not acceptable behavior without ramping everyone else up. To the troll, it would look like no one else was taking the bait. Rather than creating a new account in order to do the same thing, the troll would go elsewhere. However, to get back on topic, Facebook does this for political reasons, which is an entirely different thing.