Bill's Bible Basics Blog

A lot of people seem to be confused regarding why they are sometimes — and in some cases, often — thrown into Facebook’s infamous jail. I would like to share with you some of my personal observations, for your consideration. You can either accept it or reject it, as you please.

Being thrown into Facebook jail does not necessarily just have to do with what you post. In other words, it is not solely — or even always — based on the nature of the content of your post. Yes, if you post something nasty such as porn, or something that Facebook views as strong hate speech, or try to sell guns or drugs, for example, I am sure that Facebook will throw you in jail. They may even just ban you from Facebook entirely and permanently. Can you really blame them?

But extreme cases aside, my observation is that whether or not you are slapped on the wrist by Facebook has more to do with the frequency of your posts, and to how many other people you post, share, message or tag your content to within a specified period of time. That is why sometimes when you are chastised, a Facebook bot will send you a message telling you to slow down.

Please notice that I said TO OTHER PEOPLE in the previous paragraph. You can post things on your own timeline to your heart’s content, as much as you want, as fast as you want, and in whatever quantity you want. Facebook doesn’t really care about that as much — unless you are breaking their content rules obviously — because you are on your own turf. It is when you start reaching out to others that Facebook keeps a sharper eye on your activity, and watches out for what appears to be spamming behavior.

As I have mentioned before, when it comes to us Facebook Christians, I don’t really think that being blocked, restricted, thrown in jail, or whatever, is solely because of our Christian beliefs. Yes, it is sometimes due to sharing our faith, but not always. In fact, I am convinced that quite often, our being chastised by Facebook is due to other reasons.

Personally, I think it has more to do with the fact that, on the whole, we Christians on Facebook tend to be a rather zealous, enthusiastic lot of people. We have the truth of God’s Word, and so we really want to share it with as many people as possible. Therein lies the problem, and the reason why some of us find ourselves facing jail time a lot more often than others.

So because of our zeal for the Lord, what do we do? Quite simply, we go overboard sometimes. We post, tag, message and share to other Facebook users, more frequently, and to more people, than Facebook’s quota algorithms allow. That is why so many of us get castigated, in my belief. In short, we do it to ourselves, and then we turn around and accuse Facebook of persecuting us because of our faith, when, in my view, that may not really be what is happening in some cases.

For example, when I first joined Facebook in early 2011, and before I learned the ropes, I was blocked, restricted or thrown in jail a few times, because I didn’t yet fully understand the aforementioned quota system, limitations and anti-spam safeguards that Facebook has in place. And to be honest, there were probably times when I honestly didn’t care, and was willing to take the risks, because I wanted to get out the Word. How about you? Come on now. Be honest with yourself.

Once I figured it all out, I wasn’t chastised by Facebook for years, because I made sure that I played within their rules of conduct. That is, until the time when I began tagging my friends again, after receiving their specific permission to do so.

This is a very important point, so please listen up. You really don’t want to start tagging people left and right, whether they are your friends or not, unless you know for certain that they want to be tagged. Why take unnecessary risks?

Let me put it to you this way. If you keep tagging a pile of people from whom you did not receive permission first, sooner or later, some of them are going to become annoyed, and you are going to find yourself in a big heap of trouble.

Now here’s the thing. If they do become annoyed by your constant tags, they may not play nice. In other words, instead of asking you nicely to stop tagging them, they may just go behind your back and start marking all of your tags as spam. Do you know what will happen if Facebook receives enough complaints regarding your uninvited tags? That’s right! To jail you go, buddy! You see. You did it to yourself.

Of course, the problem here is that we users don’t know what Facebook’s daily quotas are for different activities, because they absolutely refuse to tell us. Not only that, but Facebook is always changing the value of these daily quotas, in order to keep us off guard. I understand the logic of their approach. It is a way to force us to be conscious of what we are doing, and to be careful regarding our posting, sharing, messaging and tagging levels.

Now, one thing you don’t want to do is to keep making the same mistake over and over again. If Facebook suddenly restricts your activities, or throws you in jail, don’t just get angry at them. Stop and try to figure out why you find yourself in that situation. What were you doing beforehand?

You see, the way it works is this: Each time that you make the same mistake, Facebook’s automated system sees that, and your punishment time — that is, your jail time — will simply be extended longer and longer each time that you make that same mistake, to the point where you may find yourself spending more time in jail, than out of jail. Kind of dumb on your part isn’t it?

Let me emphasize again that it is not just about the quantity of your posts, shares, messages, tags or whatever. It is also about the frequency or speed with which you do it. In other words, let’s assume that on one particular day, Facebook has set a tagging quota of 200 per user.

Of course, you will have no way of knowing that this is the quota for that day. But let’s say that you have only tagged 60 people that day, when all of a sudden, you are booted to jail. Wow! What happened? Surely you hadn’t tagged too many people already! In other words, maybe you didn’t break the quantity quota that day, but maybe you did break the frequency — or speed — quota. In other words, you were tagging people too fast, and Facebook’s system interpreted that as spam activity. Do you understand?

To reiterate, sometimes we are indeed harassed unfairly by liberal-minded Facebook employees who are annoyed by or who disagree with our Christian faith. After all, there are rotten apples in every barrel. But sometimes we also bring these problems upon ourselves by breaking Facebook’s posting, sharing and tagging rules.

In conclusion, when you are stopped, jailed, blocked or locked out of your account, quite often it is a result of Facebook trying to control spam and other forms of abuse on its global network, and may have little to do with your personal faith. With an estimated two billion users, many millions of whom are simultaneously online every single day, it is not an easy task. As a result, sometimes their bots and algorithms do make mistakes, or what are referred to as “false positives”. Their bots can be overly aggressive, and they incorrectly identify some actions taken by users. Facebook has admitted as much. But at least Skynet hasn’t arrived yet, and we aren’t just being wiped out! 🙂

So that is my take on this issue. What do YOU think?