In the previous project I wanted to build a tool on par with the Hong kong police surveillance app. Starting with this project I found an opportunity to attempt to make something like this. In a series of posts of Facebook, Taiwanese citizens complained about how their posts were being taken by Facebook. Specific details explained below. But in all instances, none of the posts violated Facebooks published community guidelines.
This is a translated screenshot of the post. Firstly this is on Facebook, not a censored social network. Secondly, taking a post down about something as serious as the protests is dangerous. Thirdly, this being related to China and their growing power over exporting their censorship through soft power, bullying nations and business pushes us closer to a dystopia where free information is available nowhere.
What follows in the comments are endless examples form other Facebook netizens who have has similar experiences.
Much of the protest in Hong Kong is stemming from young people, so one possible outcome for this project would be educating older people about the issues facing their nation.
Some solutions to the issues regarding bad content and censorship on social media including just jumping ship to other, smaller, more controlled and even privacy focused and encrypted platforms. wt.social is one of the latest in these, a social platform from the founder of Wikipedia.
However, these are not solutions. The main issue is reaching the majority of he population, not the group aware and engaged enough to know about the severity of these issues. Thus as far as I can see the solution currently needs to be on the main social channels.
This is one of the comments posted by Su-Mei Chen. None of them come close to propaganda or harassment. Simply something from the link or in the image prompted facebook to assume this was suspicious without human inspection.
Take the fourth screenshot. It links to this article. Its about mushroom smuggling and how to avoid the issue.
Another blocked post links to this article on a CCP spy. In this case this raises other suspicions on whether the take down came from the CCP. A real thing for many companies, byt not publicly known for Facebook, who have expressed no desire to return to China.
This screenshot shows someone who found some evidence to suggest if they change the phone language to Japanese rather than Chinese, the post will be reviewed by Japanese reviewers and not get not taken down.
This an example of that a lot of the comments look like. Constant violations of community guidelines. This one from WL Wu.
This one is an article about an education minister returning to his post.
If there is a pattern in the links the links that Facebook blocks, its not yet evident.
Article [Article archive](https://web.archive.org/web/20191122023450/https://www.mirrormedia.mg/story/20191107pol002/](https://web.archive.org/web/20191122023450/https://www.mirrormedia.mg/story/20191107pol002/))
Here is another post showing a simple link to a news article about Hong Kong was removed.
Translated headline: "The Wall Street Journal" "You Don't Have to Face It Alone" Hidden Support Network Behind Hong Kong Demonstrations
Nothing about the post warrants a breach of community guidelines or fake news.
https://twitter.com/FromaHKPeople1/status/1182452275815440384/photo/1