Has anyone else been having issues with Fa ce book recently? More than usual, I mean?

Have you heard anything about the alg orithm having been tweaked?

The reason I ask is that because within the past week or so, I’ve had several comments re moved. I’m wondering if it’s because they contained question marks, so that perhaps the f ilter confused them with transparent ph ishing schemes. You know, those random introductions from supposedly adoring admirers that attempt to sca m you into friending them. It might also be possible that the system has been tweaked so as to be extra vigilant at heading off rhetoric and vitriol with the el ection season heating up.

Of course, the day-to-day operations of Fa ce book no longer seem to be run by people at all. Some Fa ce book Frankenstein could simply have thrown a lever and unleashed an A. I. automaton, and now it’s raging across the so cial m edia platform de leting posts and ba nning people and lo cking users out of their accounts, seemingly willy-nilly. Another user contacted me recently to let me know she was lo cked out for “un usual ac tivity,” because she attempted to respond to an understandable increase of well-wishers on her birthday.

With the de letion of my comments, I received a boiler plate explanation stating that they had been identified as s pam. When my post (promoting my upcoming talk at Princeton Public Library on October 8 ) was removed, I was notified that it was because it vio lated community st andards. And no, the vio lation had nothing to do with promoting the event. I did share the announcement from another page, but that wasn’t in vio lation of any Fa ce book rule. I can only assume it was something in my characteristically witty commentary that the soulless al gorithm didn’t get (kind of like my old boss).

These de letions were accompanied by ominous warnings that repeat of fenses could result in time-outs or banishment. With all the illiterate garbage and ugly, inflammatory bear-baiting on the pl atform, obviously the guy they want to go after is the one who gets ten likes on his posts about classical music.

I was offered the option to ap peal the post de letion, which of course I did. (No such options were offered for the re moved messages.) Supposedly, the case will be reviewed within a certain number of days, and if it’s found the judgment was in error, the post will be restored. I’m not holding my breath. Everyone knows there are a very limited number of live people working in the boiler room at Fa ce book.

I apologize for the gratuitous number of spaces inserted into potentially sensitive words, my attempt to dodge having even this re moved, as an earlier attempt to explain what was happening in a message thread caused the comment to be de leted.

Naturally, I don’t want to be exiled from Fa ce book. It’s yet another reminder that I shouldn’t be investing so much of myself here, beyond perhaps posting fluff and teasers, and that really I should be shifting my longer-form rants and ruminations to a blogging platform.

I took a screen shot of one of the notices, which I will include in the comments below.