Literrata: Epic Facebook fail, who knew mentioning Gravenstein apples was considered spam

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Epic Facebook fail, who knew mentioning Gravenstein apples was considered spam

Yet another doozy from the Facebook hall of infamy, shall we call it an epic fail? Twice in one day?

1.EPIC FACEBOOK CENSORSHIP FAIL. For the upcoming harvest apple picking fair, I wrote on Fort Ross Conservancy‘s group page, that the apples in the historic orchard were “The oldest Gravensteins in Sonoma county, perhaps even in the state of California.“

And my completely innocuous comment was removed by Facebook for “going against community standards.”

I had no idea that writing a comment on a post for a group page that I belong to, was considered spam, false advertizing, fraudulent, or harmful. I thought we were supposed to engage and interact with our groups that we belong to—isn’t that what social media means?

Ya think? What exactly are you protecting the Facebook community against?

Why, I am contemplating committing unnatural acts with apples. How, I don’t know.

And yet you allow white supremacy hate memes on Facebook.

You make poor decisions based on faulty algorithms. Fire the AI bots, they’re drunk.

This is flat out harassment. I hope someone sues your privileged ass Zuk.

Sarah of the Fort Ross Conservancy is as puzzled by this as I am. I guess Facebook doesn’t like any historical posts. Another huge group I belong to, “California History,” was shut down and archived by Facebook. When you’re on the Facebook AI bot harassment list, it is forever.

For the record, I have old ties with the Fort Ross community, I was friends with the former director of the museum and the Living History historic reenactment group, and with Park Ranger Dan Murley—we used to joke that we were cousins (Murley and Hurley are from the same name).

During the 1980s and 1990s, I attended all the community events at Fort Ross State Historic Park—and even couriered/smuggled in the special Fort Ross commemorative gold medallions to the Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad commemorating the historic reenactment of the Chirchov expedition event with the former Soviet Union.

This is the sweet Fort Ross invite in question:

Fort Ross Harvest Festival
Saturday October 16th
Fort Ross State Historic Park
10am – 3pm

Free! California State Parks $10/car parking fees apply

Happy Fall! What better time to announce we will be hosting Fort Ross Harvest Festival than the first week of fall. It has been two years since we welcomed you to this event and we have missed you all!

Join us in the historic orchard for a safe and joyful reunion for Fort Ross Harvest Festival on Saturday, October 16, 2021.

Our dear friends from Russian House Kedry will tantalize your eyes and ears with their enchanting traditional Russian songs and dances. Join in!

As the health and happiness of our visitors are paramount, this will be a low key version of our usual Harvest Festival celebration. We will not be organizing pumpkin carving, apple painting, or apple juicing this year due to the close proximity these activities require.

Pack a picnic, bring an empty bag to collect fruit, and help us harvest the bounty of the orchard. We encourage gentle harvest of all the fruit found in the orchard.

Bake a pie and tag us @fortrossconservancy with the result! We’d love to see what you do with these beautiful fruits.

Bring a hat and wear layers - weather on the coast can change quickly. We will not have an ADA shuttle this year so please park at the main parking lot and walk up to the orchard. (You may drive to the orchard to drop members of your group off who may not be able to walk up to the orchard, but cars must be parked in the main Fort Ross parking lot.)

Call or email us for more information info@fortross.org/ (707) 847-3437
Details: https://www.fortross.org/events.htm

#VisitFortRoss #FortRoss #WestCounty #SonomaCounty #ThingsToDo #Fall #Orchard #YouPick #Apples #Pears

And Sarah’s puzzled reply:

This is probably the trigger flag on my account, from something I reposted last March, a Liam Neesen movie meme on Paddy vs Patty. Ironically, I post it every year for St. Patrick’s Day, as does everybody else, as it resurfaces yearly as a memory. All that time it was never flagged until last year…and I was thrown in Facebook Jail as promulgating hate speech. It’s a movie meme, FFS. And so it goes. I’m beginning to enjoy poking the Facebook bear with a stick. I am all for tempting fate, and also blowing raspberries like a shofart in all the appropriate directions.

2. AND I’VE YET AGAIN BEEN CENSORED TWICE BY FB FOR POSTING A LINK ON THE FORT ROSS PAGE ABOUT AN ARTICLE I WROTE ON FORT ROSS.

See my articles on Living History at Fort Ross on my blog.

“WHEN 160 Soviet scientists, scholars, historians, geographers, businessmen, artists and crew joined the historic 250th anniversary voyage commemorating Vitus Bering and Alexei Chirikov's exploration of Russian America, little did they know that the Soviet Union they left behind on July 10, 1991, would cease to exist. News of the failed Soviet coup d'état, which kept most of us glued to CNN news and had mapmakers scrambling for updated versions of political boundaries, was celebrated with cheers by the Soviet entourage aboard the research vessel, the Akademik Shirshov, docked just hours later at San Francisco's Pier 32.

Soviets and Americans celebrated the culmination of a week's tumultuous political changes that swept the Soviet Union onto the shores of democracy during a visit to Fort Ross, where, with open arms and hearts, they feasted most sumptuously on borscht, caviar, and salmon—dancing and singing again under the flag of the Russian American Fur Trading Company that once flew over Fort Ross from 1812 to 1941.”