If Facebook can censor pictures of disabled people for being 'disturbing', no wonder the government gets away with cutting our benefits
The company’s comments and PR pivots, the government’s dismissal of MS sufferers missing out on PIP – they all come from the same sick place of treating disabled people as subhuman burdens on the state
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Your support makes all the difference.I now have no doubt that we are living in some weird Matrix-style computer simulation like the one that Keanu Reeves’ Neo escaped 20 years ago by taking Morpheus’ red pill. How else to explain a Facebook employee’s explanation for blocking a sponsored post by Ability Access, a page focussing on disability, which invited people to like it.
The administrator Simon Sansome contacted the social network in an attempt to find out why his post had been put in purdah. It’s response quite simply beggars belief.
“You will have to understand that some people see disability as disturbing,” an employee said in one of those “I’m going to say I’m trying to help you when I’m really doing the opposite” tones that we’ve all become familiar with when we call big businesses in search of assistance.
“I have never come across a page that promotes disability,” they went on.
If that sounds too surreally awful to be credible, I suggest you check out the page. A recording of the conversation has been posted to it. It is every bit as stomach churning sounds.
But some background is due at this point. The page fell afoul of the Facebook police as a result of it featuring an image of Vicky Balch, who lost part of her leg in a rollercoaster accident at the Alton Towers theme park in 2015.
Facing a PR disaster, the company quickly pivoted to say the employee had made “a mistake” and at issue was not Balch’s disability but the fact that she appears tastefully disrobed in the image.
The credibility of its explanation looks questionable because there are far more risqué images elsewhere on Facebook. It took me a matter of seconds to find some of them on a page devoted to tattoos (Balch has some rather impressive ones which is how I made the connection).
If you find the way she’s posed offensive, you’re probably the sort of person that thinks Bambi is a video nasty.
Facebook, remember, is a company that saw no problem with its users viewing a real life video nasty in the form of the Christchurch mosque massacre, the perpetrator of which livestreamed it.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s response to the furore led New Zealand’s privacy commissioner John Edwards to describe the outfit as “morally bankrupt pathological liars”.
When you consider the staggeringly offensive comments of one of its employees towards Ability Access, it’s very hard to take issue with that assessment.
So bizarrely out of whack are Facebook’s systems and values that you can see why ministers in this country are inclined to create a new regulator with the aim of protecting the public from “online harm”.
I was initially inclined to support it, but another story this morning highlights the problem with the British state taking on that role.
The phrase “morally bankrupt pathological liars” could equally well apply to the British government when you consider its response to the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s publication of research showing that cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) planned over the next three years could end up costing the taxpayer almost £10m in increased spending in other areas.
It estimates that 16,600 MS sufferers will lose out on PIP support because of the government’s 20-metre rule, removing the higher rate of mobility allowance from anyone who can “safely” walk that distance. Without it, thousands of people with this debilitating condition could end up trapped in their homes, unable to work or participate in other activities.
These will be the invisible casualties of the attitudes displayed by both ministers the Facebook employee.
But response to the research was typically mealy mouthed, and completely failed to address the issues raised by the MS Society. “We’re spending more than ever supporting disabled people and those with health conditions,” a DWP spokesperson told The Independent.
“Over two thirds of MS claimants receive the same or a higher award after DLA to PIP reassessment. We work closely with organisations such as the MS Society to ensure that PIP is working well.”
Again, look up the definition of “morally bankrupt” and tell me I’m wrong to use it in connection with this wretched administration.
The Facebook employee’s comments, the company’s PR pivots, the government’s flipping the bird to the MS Society’s research, they all come from the same sick place. It’s one that holds disabled people as subhuman burdens on the state, best left to fester in their homes where no one can see them with clothes on or without.
Morpheus, please, give me that red pill so I can get the hell out of the place. Whatever it’s like on the other side, it can’t be as bad as this.
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