Activity in Philosophy

Instruction:

Research on any idea or claim that is currently circulating in the media an on the
Internet. Analyze it and determine if it is true or false. Discuss your analysis in class.

Claim:

A message spreading on Facebook claims that users may be inadvertently

reporting pages or sending users to “FB Jail” because of a new feature on the
mobile app that submits a report whenever the user shakes their phone.

Analysis:

This is a false claim. This won’t have anything to do with why pages are being
reported or users being sent to “FB Jail”. The feature is only for reporting technical or
payment issues within the Facebook app (i.e. bugs) and not for reporting pages, groups,
users or content.

This is being gradually rolled out to both iPhone and Android users on a staggered
basis, meaning not all users may have the feature available at the time of writing. It’s
also unlikely that any inadvertent bug reporting will occur since users will need to
interact with a menu after shaking their phone.

However claims that this new feature would explain why pages keep getting reported
or users sent to “FB jail” (this refers to Facebook punishing users by blocking some
features for a certain period of time when they have been deemed to have violated
Facebook’s terms of service) are false, since this “shake to report” feature is only for
reporting technical issues within the app.

Reporting content or users that violate Facebook’s terms of service is done through
a different set of menus altogether that have nothing to do with shaking your phone.

Mazeen D. Paraiso

12 - Delta