El Aquelarre - from Francisco Goya's Black Paintings (This is how I'm visualizing me telling you all of the following ...)
A few weeks back - according to the Meta ad agent I spoke to - someone reported one of the drawings on the Holwell page to Facebook as being offensive…
To those who don’t know - the artist in question is one of our esteemed - and most long standing - Holwell regulars - and is autistic. He often likes to joining several poses together in one drawing. There won't have been a sexual intention to the arrangement - and any sexual inferences will be creations in the mind of the viewer. It may also be worth noting that it wasn't in the front 5 of the original post - it was about half way through - and but one of the now 1000s of pictures that are now on the page…
The AI agreed with the person complaining and removed it. I challenged the decision - Facebook’s community guidelines say that they're ok with artistic nudity - they give a full frontal of Michelangelo's David as an example. The AI upheld the decision…
I also spoke to some of the business support people - who were sympathetic - but said that they have no direct sway over such events. I lodged an appeal through a link lady I spoke to sent me - to which I heard nothing back - not even the promised email confirmation of it being sent - and later then complained via the Oversight board - from which I have still heard nothing…
Hot on the heels of that, the AI then flagged a Daido Moriyama post I’d put out around the same time as being "unsafe" - and I don't seem to be able to challenge this(?) Whether you do or don't like Daido Moriyama's work, he's an internationally acclaimed photographer. His work can be gritty - it was a somewhat sanitised selection that I made - but any artist I show on the page I do so for educational purposes - and he deals with the human figure - and some of his compositions and juxtapositions are something anyone could learn from.
And just to tip things over into farce - since flagging the post as “unsafe” - Facebook is now recommending me Daido Moriyama content…
There’s been some other things too - e.g. AI also flagged an advert the other month as spam (it was a link to Eventbrite tickets) - and despite my complaints about that the last I checked the penalty against me still stands… They’ve also brought in a one size fits all “business plan” - which - if you don’t comply with (i.e. buy advertising) - they’ll limit your reach - so I’m told…
I’m just a guy trying to run a life drawing class…. I'm also a slow writer - and it just takes up so much time to complain every time - and still never get anywhere - and more generally I really don't like what they've done with the platform over the past few years - both for my purposes - and in the wider context - the latter of which I could write several volumes - but we’ll save all that for a rainy day…
So - here we are - with a new blog and a website landing page… Please do feel free to let me know of any display problems - or of things not working properly… It’s been a rather slow and painful learning curve over the last few weeks just to get this far! With any luck it’ll slowly keep evolving and growing as things go along… And as much as I hate to be the “don’t forget to like and subscribe” guy (all said in the nauseating Blue Peter presenter voice) do support us on here - as cornball as it sounds, without you guys none of this happens…
And with that - onwards and upwards… I’ll do my best to make it interesting…
