On Wednesday, Her Campus published a piece called “The Other F-Word College Women Should Stop Using.” The piece discusses situations where college women call each other “fat” as an insult during a petty fight, like when tensions get high during a night out. The author, Rachael David, asked her fellow students to “think twice when they address one another,” reminding readers that “We’re all just trying to get through life loving our bodies while ignoring the impossible standards society sets for them.”
We posted the piece on Facebook at 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon. According to our traffic analytics, it was the most highly-trafficked post from Facebook all day. It remains in the Most Read section on our site. And yet by the end of the day Thursday, it had been banned. This was brought to our attention by the author, who told us she couldn’t share the piece on her own Facebook page.
We’ve been trying to figure out why this post was banned without success. While our social media editor has sent several reports to Facebook asking about the post, we haven’t heard anything back. When an attempt is made to post the link on Facebook, the site says, “You can’t post this because it has a blocked link. The content you’re trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe.”
Facebook’s Community Standards include categories of content that may be deemed inappropriate, including Direct Threats, Self-Injury, and Criminal Activity, as well as Nudity, Hate Speech, and Violent or Graphic Content. It’s hard to see why this post would fall into any of those boxes. In fact, Facebook says in the Community Standards that “People use Facebook to share their experiences and to raise awareness about issues that are important to them. This means that you may encounter opinions that are different from yours, which we believe can lead to important conversations about difficult topics.” Our mission is to provide a platform for college women to share their voices, and that leads to a huge range of viewpoints on Her Campus. While many readers may have disagreed with some or all of the opinions in the piece, it was hardly violent, hateful or threatening.
We’ve seen Facebook go wrong with banning media from the platform before—Earlier this week, we wrote about Facebook banning a photo of a plus-size model for “promoting an idealized physical image.” Luckily, tons of people spoke up about the issue, and Facebook brought back the photo.
We’re at a loss as to why this post could have been banned from Facebook. If you have any idea why, let us know—And if you don’t, send a report to Facebook and ask!