Why Is Facebook So Poor At Preventing Harassment?

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Back in March, I told you about the relentless harassment of Allison Hagood.  Her harasser, Heather Ann "Frau" Murray, has even turned up in my comments

Facebook has again failed to protect its users. 

It turns out that my main harasser and her fellow harassers are creating fake profiles using my and other activists’ names, and using those profiles to report posts that mention names even in conversations between friends.

So, Facebook has created a system in which no one may ever refer to anyone by a name under any circumstances, ever, even in conversations between friends.

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From Orac Knows on April 1, 2016: An antivaccine activist explains how she uses Facebook reporting algorithms to harass and silence pro-science bloggers

So, yes, Ms. Murray, through her own copious statements, regularly reveals herself to be anti-Semitic as hell, and a Holocaust denier, to boot. I’d love to see her come here and spew her bigoted pseudohistory. I guarantee you that, as is the case with antivaccine loons, she can’t repeat a claim that I haven’t heard and analyzed many times before. In any case, I feel the need for a shower after that, so much so that I’ll just leave you this link if you want to see more of her blatant anti-Semitism, other than this last example I’m posting here:

OK, so from my perspective (and that of most people who do not share her bigoted views), Ms. Murray is a despicable, contemptible woman. That isn’t the reason I posted this, although posting this did give me an excuse to emphasize just how nasty she is, something I failed to do last time. (I don’t know what I was thinking then.) Far more important, however, is that she is now explaining how she targets pro-science advocates. A series of comments from her from a super-secret closed Facebook group have found their way into the “wrong” hands (i.e., ours)

Comments

[Allison Hagood]

Thanks for continuing to cover this issue, Liz! The lengths to which Ms. Murray and her fellow harassers will go, the depths to which they will sink, continue to fascinate me.

[Adelaide Dupont]

((((Alison)))))

these are hugs. And likes.

[Allison Hagood]

Thank you very much, Adelaide. I really appreciate the support I've received during this 18 months of harassment. :)

[Eric Chow]

Hello

Another one of Allison's accounts has been banned. Apparently she used the phrase "Boxed Wine" to communicate with someone randomly about stuff. Heather has taken that phrase, converted it to a profile, and reported that. This account has now been banned for another 30 days.

This is now getting ridiculous.

[Liz Ditz]

"How is this happening? How are they gaming the system? It turns out the anti-vaxxers are creating many accounts and sitting on them, sometimes for over a year. They are naming these accounts after actual people–friends of the people they want to attack. Sometimes they use the names of the people they are attacking themselves. And then, using those phony accounts, they report any post using that name. I imagine they have to report quite a few and get their friends, also, to report, until the report sticks."

https://karenvaxblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/smells-like-desperation/

[M.J.]

You know that you have absolutely no grounds to complain about any of this, right? You and the people that you associate with have been doing the exact things you are complaining about for years upon years now.

As a matter of fact, I was targeted for harassment numerous times by you and your ilk. I recall one incident on twitter that was particularly harsh were one your "friends" accused me of being a child abuser. You - that is you Liz - congratulated them, gave a virtual high five AND encouraged them to keep going.

Hypocrite.

[Eric Chow]

I disagree.

Harrassment isn't simply about disagreeing with you on your twitter account simply because they don't agree with your opinion. Harassment is the act of acting outside the medium of discussion in order to target not only the people that are the target of harassment, but also their associates, their place of work, their families, openly stalking their life details and the whatnot. People have the right to disagree to your opinion just as you have the right to publish an (incorrect) opinion.

As for allegations about child abuse, has anyone reported to your associates directly to say that you are a child abuser? Publish it here. Not only that, and this is my opinion, not vaccinating is akin to child abuse. Especially with all the overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines do not cause whatever "vaccine injuries" you purport to be reporting about. So this statement isn't harassment but more of a statement of fact. I'll go even further and say that the entire lot of you people are infant killers, considering the spike in deaths on vaccine preventable diseases in the absense of (any) evidence supporting your position.

And I'm going to keep it here in this medium. I don't know who you are but I'm not going to waste time trying to figure out who you associate with, where you work, etc because frankly, unlike the harasser in Allison Hagood's case, I don't have the time nor the patience. And unlike Allison's harasser, I actually have a life, whereas the person harassing Allison is actually obsessive. There's a difference.

[Archive of knowledge]

If I recall correctly, MJ is a shill for MMS - using bleach enemas on autistic children to "cure" them, but he got hilariously upset when he misinterpreted a joke as a suggestion that he would actually be stupid enough to use MMS on himself instead of on defenseless children. No doubt he is also aggrieved that abusing children with unnecessary, painful and dangerous "treatments" has been called "abuse" by decent people. So sad...

[Adelaide Dupont]

@AoK I don't remember that bit about MJ [being "a shill for MMS"].

I would remember the misinterpretation - and the joke.

[AOK]

Adelaide: Here's a link to Orac's discussion of MJ's support of MMS http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/21/mms-a-k-a-bleach-for-autism-just-when-i-think-im-out/