Speaking of Social Media Standards… (see Matt Bors)
Rachita Taneja had one of her Sanitary Panels comic strips removed from Facebook.
Facebook on Tuesday morning took down a comic strip criticising the alleged inconsistent application of its community standards, the framework within which the social media giant takes action against comments and other material reported as offensive. The post was unblocked later in the evening.
“I made the comic because I often get threats and men say very vulgar things to me on Facebook,” Taneja said. “But I recently posted something about men being trash – literally, I said ‘men are trash’ – and Facebook took down my post and it blocked me [her personal profile]. It didn’t allow me to like, share, post, or message my friends for three days.”
What If All Comic Strip Characters Aged Naturally
On the forthcoming 100th anniversary of Gasoline Alley columnist Dan Tyree considers the idea of other comic strip characters aging at real time rate.
above: Gasoline Valley” by Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder (via Jeff Overturf)
– “Hi and Lois”: Baby Trixie, all grown up, joins a class-action lawsuit concerning the skin damage caused by Mr. Sunbeam.
– “B.C.”: Our heretofore urbane cavemen get stuck in the crotchety rut of ranting to their descendants about having to walk to school in an Ice Age, uphill both ways.
Dan Tyree’s full column from the Red Bluff Daily News.
Cartoonists Share Their Favorite Election Comics
Tea, at Comics Kingdom, polled cartoonists about their favorite election related comics.
Scott Stantis Annotates Prickly City
Over at the GoComics blog Charlie Upchurch interviewed Scott Stantis (pre-election).
“I am a practicing Catholic, and that does inform how I think. But it does inform me, the idea that my church preaches about sympathy and empathy, and compassion for poor people, for immigrants. How is that reckoned with being a conservative in 2018? Being a conservative in 2018 is really, really weird and really, really hard. Trump is defying what that means, and that’s not what it means to me, it’s not why I became a conservative, and it’s not why I worked in the party. It’s not why I think the way I think. We’re looking at this and going, ‘this is insanity. There’s a middle ground here.'”
In what reminds me of those old Herblock books,
Scott comments on selected recent Prickly City and editorial cartoons.
25 Things by Mark Evanier
Mark Evanier lists a number of things, some of which could apply to comic strips and newspapers.
Everybody Loves a (Family) Circus
Cartoonist Jeff Parker reports on a New Orleans Times Picayune coincidence.
But that wasn’t the only same day Family Circus synchronicity that day.
Pigskin Peanuts Traveling Exhibit
The 50 Sunday and daily strips in this exhibition demonstrate the fun Charles Schulz had with the sport and explore his wonderful world of Pigskin Peanuts.
Pigskin Peanuts is currently on view at The Fort Collins Museum of Art.
above: Old Peanuts by Frank Jacobs and Bob Clarke from 1972 (by way of John Glenn Taylor).
Facebook’s “community standards” thing seems capricious at best and wildly arbitrary at best. I myself have had my account shut down for a few days at a time because FB’s bots — and they are bots, not real people — has misread an image and made an assumption with no basis in reality. And yes, there really is no way within Facebook to appeal it…
… but if you do like I do, you just call them. Once the operator got over the shock of hearing an actual voice with an actual complaint, I was shunted about for nearly twenty minutes before someone — unnamed, of course — finally deigned to look at the terribly offensive image in question and admit, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with it.
What was especially galling about this was that it was a closed group. No one could see it unless they were a member, and the only way they could become a member was by asking me for permission to join. Technically, FB’s “community standards” dont apply within closed groups… until, of course, they suddenly do, and then you’re pretty much SOL.
However, should I report an image that is in a public group — meaning any of FB’s billions of users can see it — of sexual activity in graphic, near-medical detail, I can assure you the boilerplate response will be “We looked at it. No problem. But thanks for letting us know anyway.” Seriously, these are not just simple nudes. We’re talking hardcore sex scenes, with literally everything on full display. “No problem. It’s okay.”
It just makes zero sense.