Denial of Service

About a week ago, I woke up and did my usual routine which includes breakfast and checking social media, which is something we do a lot of these days, often with the former being skipped.

I read messages that people had left me on Twitter as I slept, mostly responses to things I had posted the night before.

Then I went on to reading Facebook, except I couldn’t.

Instead of seeing my usual timeline, I had been greeted with a banner which suggested that I have apparently posted “underage nudity”, and had been blocked for 72 hours.

Now while I have been known for posting some outrageous items, underage nudity is not within my range of interests, so after reading the banner I had wondered what might have set things off.

Nudity itself doesn’t bother me at all, as far as I can tell, we all have bodies. Guns bother me a lot more than nudity ever will. and also the fact that gay people can’t marry in Australia, The TPP, War, Religious nutcases and people who shoot animals because they lack a decent sized cock.

I’m a (left-leaning) activist at heart, and I suppose that posting a story on something I detest causes certain heartless Facebook users quite a lot of angst.

And somewhere along the line, someone has worked out that they can “game” Facebook.

If you cheese someone off, there’s nothing stopping them from reporting your photo as underage nudity, even if it is just a photo of a three day old kitten.

The system seems to be automated, and once you’re reported, you’re done for three days.

And worse, how many further reports and suspensions will have your page removed permanently?

Nobody seems to check to see if you had actually posted anything offensive, the system simply trusts that you had.

But surely you can get in touch with Facebook and report this?

Well no, you can’t. If You’ve ever tried to contact Facebook, you’ll find that it’s an almost impossible task, can any other company do as well as Facebook without active customer service?

There is also no indication of which post was the culprit, not that any were offensive and certainly none would fall under the description of “underage nudity”.

Last week the suspension was lifted, but early Friday morning, it happened a second time.

All it amounts to is a denial of service attack by, most likely, someone who doesn’t support my views, and rather than dispute me directly, would rather act in a cowardly fashion.

The only hint I have of anyone feeling grumpy with my posts, is one comment about my banner image being offensive. It’s a poster of a cartoon wolf holding a microphone… He has pants on.

When I went to the person’s page, there was nothing there, no title, banner or anything.

Wolfie Rankin.

* Not that it stopped me, multiple accounts are definitely the way to go.