What was the stupidest reason you've ever been put in Facebook jail?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There is a professional wrestler in AEW named Hook. One of his catchphrases is, “Send Hook.” He doesn’t say it about himself, but other people say it about him.

I’m a member of an AEW fan group on Facebook. Somebody posed for a picture with Hook, and I posted a comment, “SEND HOOK”.

And I got a 24-hour Facebook ban for soliciting sex. That’s a pretty good example of what happens when robots take over your company’s content moderation.

I got a warning a few months ago for quoting Carrie Fisher’s monologue from Blues Brothers that has the words “I must now kill you, and your brother”, but I can at least understand that.

What’s the stupidest reason you’ve been put in Facebook jail?

2

explaining to someone how to save a meme to their device.

3

Responding to a photo of a gigantic spider in someone’s house, I suggested just blowing the whole place up and killing it with fire. Like you do.

Go directly to Facebook jail.

I regret nothing. They’re bugs. They deserve to die. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, arachnids aren’t bugs, but the quote is too good to pass up.)

4

Yep. And it’s why a friend of mine had a bitch of a time setting up an account. The 'bots didn’t believe he was real or they felt he was someone else posing as himself. Try to argue with a machine.

5

Incidentally, I disagreed with the decision, and it got overturned.

I’M BACK BITCHES

SEND HOOK

6

Not Facebook, but I had a short ban in r/ExplainLikeImFive. The bots in that sub are a bit aggressive. Someone asked for an explanation for something really simple. I gave a short, but complete, answer and the bots deleted it for being too short with a note explaining that answers have to be longer and if an question can actually be answered in just a few words, you’re supposed to report the post.
Whatever, I answered again and then added some extra words so the bots wouldn’t notice it was a short answer. However (and I already knew this), it’s also against their rules to pad your answer to trick the bots.

Long story short, I wound up with a week ban from the sub, but never went back to it since I was getting sick of those warnings.

The tough part is that ELI5 (as well as WhatIsThisThing) is a good place to rack up a ton of karma. Most answers, presuming you’re correct and first to answer (or close to it) will end up getting you a few points. But from time to time, they end up on the front page of reddit and waking up in the morning to find your response has hundreds or thousands of points isn’t uncommon.

7

I’m not on Reddit but wouldn’t the whole point of a subreddit like that be to provide short simple explanations?

8

Not mine, but I had an engineer friend get put in Facebook jail (and confirmed upon review) for hate speech for suggesting we Americans are dumb for not going metric.

9

I don’t remember what the original question was and it’s since been deleted, but I answered “A square is a special type of quadrilateral or tetragon.”, then got a warning that said:

Thanks for participating in ELI5. [This comment] has been removed as it is not a sufficient explanation. Since the original poster wanted help understanding, all top-level comments must be a real explanation or a follow-up question [Rule 3]

If the question can be explained in one short sentence, maybe it was not ELI5 material: a complex concept needing a simplified explanation. In that case please report it or send the moderators a link; it may get removed.

I replied “C’mon, what was wrong with this answer”

Then I reposted my answer but padded it to say “A square is a special type of tetragon. Hopefully that’s the answer you’re looking for and this keeps the bots from deleting my reply again.”
That reply got a few points before being removed and me getting another warning that said:

You have been permanently banned from participating in [r/explainlikeimfive]. You can still view and subscribe to [r/explainlikeimfive], but you won’t be able to post or comment.

Note from the moderators:

don’t try to trick the bot

To which I replied “Maybe just fix your bots so they don’t delete comments that answer the questions properly.”

They changed the ban to 7 days, but this was months ago and I haven’t been back since.

On the one hand, I get what they’re saying. They don’t want people giving one word answers on the assumption that they’re incomplete. However, I wish instead of automatically deleting them, they’d get flagged since, IME if the question can be answered in one sentence, it’s the OP that broke the rules, not the person replying.

Personally, I think the mods in that sub rely way too much on their over aggressive bots while at the same time not spending as much time reading posts as they should be. There’s 10 mods listed for that sub. That’s more than enough to remove questions that are way, way to vague (ie "How does the Earth work?) or way, way to complex for that sub (ie Can someone explain quantum mechanics to me?).

Sidenote: I always think it’s kind of amusing to watch people tripping over themselves to answer those really vague questions without so much as a follow up question to find narrow down what the OP is actually looking for.

10

Not “jail,” but about a year or so ago I was openly talking shit about Zuckerberg on FB, specifically just to see what would happen. All my critical posts just disappeared one day, no explanation.

11

I am so glad I have no idea what you are talking about.

Dan

12

I never bothered to join.
I figured the whole thing would quickly dissolve into a pain & a jillion issues.

13

Amazingly, I’ve been able to stay out of jail for the 18 (oh my God, has it really been that long?) years I’ve been on Facebook. I’ve flirted with violations–using my established nickname instead of my legal first name during their draconian “real name policy” enforcement period, posting profanity-laced political tirades and suggesting that certain politicians or Supreme Court justices might consider performing acts of sexual violence on themselves, and sharing some photos that certain overly-conservative censorbots might have censored. But I guess I’ve flown under the radar. It’ll probably be something totally innocuous that does me in eventually, like a photo of a fish that somehow looks anti-Semitic.

14

I posted an adoptable cat on tiktok and it got taken down for child endangerment. My best guess is that it was because it said something like “Butterfly is ten years old and has been waiting three years for her family. Will you take her home?” and… you know… if had been a human kid, that would have been bad? Anyway, I appealed and it got put back up.

A co-worker made a job post that got taken down for discrimination. Best we can figure is that it’s because it said something about seeking a “crazy cat lady or man” and either the word crazy or the words lady or man triggered some robot.

15

LOL, how dare you discriminate against mentally-sound nonbinary persons who prefer dogs but can still perform essential job skritches with reasonable accommodations?

16

Not quite the same thing, but… a friend posted a picture of her 3 daughters at the wedding of the oldest one.

Someone reported her for posting nudity.

There was no nudity.

17

I googled “anit-semitic fish”, and…

18

Until recently, it was for using the phrase “poor white trash” in a post quoting a cartoon by Callahan (aliens riding in a spaceship are puzzled over why the only earthlings who ever notice them are poor white trash).

But this week, I responded to a friend’s band debuting the following night with, “knock 'em dead”, which was canceled because it “violated community standards”. We have a new champion!

19

I guess telling an actor to “break a leg” will trigger the same response.

20

For a promo for a political campaign event that we’d paid for and for which some other part of the vast, soulless FB bureaucracy had already accepted payment.

Took almost three days to get it all sorted out IIRC. Grrrrr.