Moderators are crying foul over the removal of a popular, longstanding Facebook group where Arlingtonians have shared memories of growing up in the county.
“I Grew Up in Arlington,” a 15-year-old group with about 25,000 members, went dark last week after Facebook took it down and disabled some users’ accounts. The company reportedly accused them of violating standards against solicitation of children — claims that moderators strenuously deny.
Eric Dobson, one of the moderators, told ARLnow that he believes an AI-driven algorithm was responsible and may have misinterpreted some users’ posts, a mistake similar to a technical issue that affected many Facebook groups around the world last year.
Specifically, Dobson believes the algorithm erroneously identified a problem with group members posting pictures of their sports teams growing up in Arlington. Dobson said members commented on things like how cute the child was or about their uniform, which he believes AI wrongly identified as child solicitation.
“I can also see how AI would be programmed, that if there’s pictures of little children and people start talking about how cute they are, how pretty they are, and pulling their hair and stuff, it might be like, ‘hey, what the hell’s going on here?'” said Dobson. “But anybody with any common sense would be like, ‘that’s just perfectly okay, because none of the pictures are people who are minors anymore.'”
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on this story. But the company previously backtracked on a widespread purge of Facebook groups last summer, where many admins reported receiving unsubstantiated messages from Meta accusing them of violating community standards.
Dobson said he and fellow moderator David Tyskowski’s own Facebook and other Meta accounts were disabled without notifications of the group violation. Tyskowski only found out about the violation through his girlfriend’s Meta account.
“Big Tech is forcing technology they created onto users and it does not work,” Tyskowski said in a statement. “The pictures and the responses reflect real human relatedness and connection. AI doesn’t know how to see that. And there needs to be a way to check AI and appeal its actions.”
Dobson added that the moderators are careful about who and what they approve into the group. Members have to answer specific questions about Arlington before they are admitted, and moderators will review and only allow posts that meet the group’s guidelines.
In times when comments get out of hand, Dobson says the group self-polices well as members flag inappropriate comments.
“If anybody has said something inappropriate on any of these pictures, someone would have flagged it, and David and I would have addressed it,” said Dobson. “It’s certainly remotely possible that something happened overnight, and we didn’t see it, but Facebook usually gives you a little bit of time to address things.”
The moderators say they have little recourse to fight the group removal. Since they lost their own Meta accounts, they can’t submit an appeal to Facebook. Group members can’t appeal either, as the group currently is not visible on Facebook.
“This content isn’t available right now,” the group page now says. “When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.”
Dobson, who grew up in Arlington, said the group contained residents’ stories that couldn’t be found anywhere else. He’s unsure if Facebook would be able to restore the group with all of its previous content.
“I understand that … 25,000 people is a little group by Facebook standards, but there should be some sort of process for appealing and [having] human eyes put on this thing,” he said.
Photo via Google Maps
