Social justice warriors and in increasing amounts some other groups, like Islamists, are regularly engaging in mass-flagging campaigns against people they don't like on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. What happens is that dozens, even hundreds, of people will report posts made by the persona non grata.
In many cases the argument for the report may be extremely flimsy, and even completely false, yet it often does result in a sanction, often a ban. (For example, there are examples of people reporting someone on Facebook for "sending nudes" even though the person has never done anything of the sort. And get this: It was a successful report. The person got a temporary ban from Facebook, even though there was zero evidence.)
Why does this work? Why do these people get banned even though they have not broken any of the rules of the platform and the reports are extremely flimsy and often in fact completely false?
The reason is that these huge megacorporations have dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people going through the thousands and thousands of reports they get every single day. When one person on the social media platform is reported hundreds of times, the vast majority of these reports will be reviewed by employees who will check the post, see that the report is false, and just dismiss it.
However, it takes but only one such employee to have the right mindset, to be for example a social justice activist or sympathetic to the cause, who either is aware of the type of content that reported person posts, or finds it out, and doesn't like it, and can use the report as an excuse to issue the ban. Dozens and dozens of other reviewers might just dismiss the reports they are getting against that one user, but it only takes that one SJW reviewer for a ban to be issued.
That's what the mass false flagging campaign rely on (even if most of the people participating in it aren't really aware of the real reason why it works). Just keep reporting the posts made by that persona non grata until they they stumble across the right reviewer, and bam, the person is banned.
When you think about it, these employees at these corporations have a great amount of power. One person working at the company has the power to censor someone and cripple their access to their audience. The click of a button, and the person is censored. And there's usually no recourse against it. And even if the censoring is completely unfounded, based on completely false accusations, there are no repercussions for the employee who did it. There is no accountability. They can abuse their power to ban whoever they want, and they can do so completely anonymously with zero accountability, and will experience no repercussions, no matter how unfounded the ban was.
In many cases the argument for the report may be extremely flimsy, and even completely false, yet it often does result in a sanction, often a ban. (For example, there are examples of people reporting someone on Facebook for "sending nudes" even though the person has never done anything of the sort. And get this: It was a successful report. The person got a temporary ban from Facebook, even though there was zero evidence.)
Why does this work? Why do these people get banned even though they have not broken any of the rules of the platform and the reports are extremely flimsy and often in fact completely false?
The reason is that these huge megacorporations have dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people going through the thousands and thousands of reports they get every single day. When one person on the social media platform is reported hundreds of times, the vast majority of these reports will be reviewed by employees who will check the post, see that the report is false, and just dismiss it.
However, it takes but only one such employee to have the right mindset, to be for example a social justice activist or sympathetic to the cause, who either is aware of the type of content that reported person posts, or finds it out, and doesn't like it, and can use the report as an excuse to issue the ban. Dozens and dozens of other reviewers might just dismiss the reports they are getting against that one user, but it only takes that one SJW reviewer for a ban to be issued.
That's what the mass false flagging campaign rely on (even if most of the people participating in it aren't really aware of the real reason why it works). Just keep reporting the posts made by that persona non grata until they they stumble across the right reviewer, and bam, the person is banned.
When you think about it, these employees at these corporations have a great amount of power. One person working at the company has the power to censor someone and cripple their access to their audience. The click of a button, and the person is censored. And there's usually no recourse against it. And even if the censoring is completely unfounded, based on completely false accusations, there are no repercussions for the employee who did it. There is no accountability. They can abuse their power to ban whoever they want, and they can do so completely anonymously with zero accountability, and will experience no repercussions, no matter how unfounded the ban was.
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