My meme about the new city hall statue got zapped off Insta yesterday

I made a simple edit of the mayor's face on the statue with a clown nose, posted it around 5 PM. It was gone in under an hour, flagged for 'bullying'. It's a public figure and a joke about public art, not harassment. This stuff is getting pulled so fast now you can't even have a laugh. How do you even argue with an algorithm that calls satire 'bullying'?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbyc336d ago

Look, they have to draw the line somewhere. If they let every edit of a public official slide, the feed just becomes mean-spirited junk. Maybe the algorithm got it wrong this time, but letting people paste clown features on someone's image is a slippery slope. It's not about the art, it's about setting a rule that stops actual harassment before it starts.

ericfox6d ago

Remember that time the city put up those "no ball games" signs at the park? They were trying to stop big groups from taking over the whole field, but then some old guy yelled at a kid for rolling a soccer ball. Once you make a rule to stop the worst case, someone's always going to use it on the harmless stuff too. Feels like the same energy here, where the rule meant to stop real bullying ends up catching a dumb joke edit.