That’s the reason Im not using Facebook anymore (only for gossip, sorry xD) Something similar happened to me, but I think it’s better to do identifications here on iNaturalist, where the information is validated and a GBIF point is additionally created, which is powerful! Put your effort into iNat, this is a safe place.
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Hmmm. I vaguely recall that on some extremely rare occasions, a bit of misinformation about history, science, or something else turns up on FB itself. 
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Without knowing the specific group, I couldn’t tell you. But I can think of several potential reasons why there might be a rule like this:
- To prevent people from suggesting an ID base on something other than their own expertise (see this comment and my subsequent one).
- Only ID-related discussion is allowed. Some groups restrict comments to only those related to ID. For example, the “Plant Identification” FB group is different from the “Plant identification and discussion” group even though their is a lot of overlap in mods and users.
- Discussion of ID apps disrupts the group. People have mixed feelings about ID apps. I’ve seen posts devolve into an argument over the use and misuse of Merlin Bird ID on a post originally unrelated to the app. There is a lot of nuance on how/when to use an ID app and it becomes disruptive to have that same conversation repeat itself each time the app is mentioned (kinda like anytime subspecies or species splitting are mentioned on the iNat forum).
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I still think an immediate ban is extreme
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I mostly agree, but…
That’s why these FB groups have a hundred and one reminders to read the group rules before you post. Consider it a microaggression. If you consider it as a one-time event, it does seem extreme, but consider these are incredibly common occurrences in a group that numbers in the hundreds of thousands and they have the potential to be incredibly disruptive. Also, if you participate in more than a few groups, you come to realize that these are really commonplace policies and so you know to look for them.
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Yeah, I remember when “Plant ID And Discussion” was formed, it was pretty much because people wanted to talk more about the plants posted on Plant ID and the mods wouldn’t let them. The Plant ID group was so massive that the only way to ensure everyone got their IDs was to limit comments to a single comment per ID, with others using the “like” button to agree, and then close the comments when a consensus seemed to be reached. It works really well, and you don’t have endless discussion on “popular” posts constantly kicking them back to the top and burying the new ID requests. But of course when some people have their comments deleted, they take it personally and start yelling about censorship and authoritarianism and invoking Godwin’s Law, and eventually it was decided to make a second less-efficient but more discussion-focused group to send people to who wanted to have discussions about the plants.
To anyone who hasn’t been a mod on one of these groups, it can seem that rules like these are needlessly harsh and strict, but honestly trying to keep 10k+ users on-topic and following guidelines can be like herding cats. For every nicely-curated discussion of ID features in a big FB group, there are probably a half dozen off-topic or guideline-violating comments that have been removed. I’ve found that if the commentors just shrug it off and move on when they get a comment removed, they’re usually not banned, but if they make a big deal out of it and keep arguing with the mods, they just ban them because the mods don’t have time to repeat the same argument over and over again with everyone who feels slighted.
I have no idea about the specific interaction or group that inspired this post, but if it was as simple as one single post saying “iNat suggests that…” * INSTA-BAN *, that seems harsh. But you never know what’s been going on in the group behind the scenes. I remember for a while so many people were commenting in one of the bug ID groups with “I know what that is; it’s a POKEMON! :D :D” that it was clogging up everyone’s workflow. We got so sick of deleting the useless Pokemon comments that we invoked a “mention Pokemon, get insta-kicked” rule. Same with people trying to be funny by IDing everything creepy-looking as a “NOPE” for a while or commenting “kill it with fire” on every single wasp post. It didn’t look like a major problem, because we kept up with the deletions, but if there hadn’t been such aggressive mod-ing, the groups would have been buried in these comments. I can imagine if I were still a mod on there, the number of guideline-violating “I uploaded it to an app that told me it’s this” comments might have reached such a critical mass that we’d just be mass-deleting them and banning anyone that complained in an attempt to maintain our sanity. Not saying it’s necessarily the a good solution, but it’s sometimes the best that can be done when a tiny group of mods are trying to keep a large number of people within a narrow set of guidelines.
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My general feeling towards Facebook as a place for civil and informative communication is “Nope” and “Kill it with fire.” But that’s probably unfair and I can appreciate the need for tight controls on posts to some sites to keep discussions from going off the rails. I’ll stick with iNat.
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I am on FB too - but I chose who and what I read. Block and delete as needed.
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If I understand the definition of microaggression correctly, it’s an unintentionally offensive statement best responded to with an explanation of why it was offensive rather than an immediate ban
It’s kind of remarkable the extent to which discussions tend to stay good-natured and academic on iNat. There are corners of other social media platforms where informative good-faith discussion occurs, but certainly some intentional curation is needed to get there.
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I have not, and don’t use Facebook, and know very little about it, so keep that in mind when reading my post.
It’s weird that one community science group (because that is what Facebook groups for these kind of things would be, at best) would ban another. Both are equally fallible for different reasons, the one biggest reason being simple human error. Can’t Facebook moderators have new members agree not to use AI as the singular source for identification, and if the user goes against that agreement, they are then blocked? That would cover using only the CV, or only Google lens, etc. Maybe Facebook doesn’t have that feature.
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This is kinda off topic, but…
Typical unintentional, but not always. Basically a microaggression is a subtle or indirect slight that in isolation wouldn’t be a big deal but because that person experiences that same slight over and over again from many different people, it becomes unbearable to deal with.
This is definitely not the appropriate way to view microaggressions. The whole point of identifying microaggressions in society is that it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the victim to constantly explain to people why what they are saying is a slight. Rather, it is the responsibility of society and individuals to educate themselves and not say microaggressions.
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Why on earth would anyone want to run a FB group to ID pics from people anyway? It seems like it would be a constant annoyance and nothing is gained (no data that can be used by researchers). Seems such a waste of time.
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To provide something nice to people? Not everything we do has to “generate data”.
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I see identifiers from iNat on the good FB groups. Not everyone wants to have an iNat profile. Just as iNatters are not ‘all’ on FB.
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There is huge demand for it. The American Birding Association was invited to an official facebook conference a few years back because the network of bird ID facebook groups is so huge.
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I was thinking of this from the viewpoint of a third party moderator, not the victim. If it was unintentional (as you say it most often is) then it makes more sense to remove the offending comment and warn the offender, rather than ban them immediately
You may disagree with it, but others and myself have explained why this isn’t always feasible or the best option on a FB group. In particular, this post went into a lot of detail.
Also, I used the word “microaggression” to illustrate an action that wouldn’t be a big deal in isolation but is a big deal because multiple people do it over and over again. I didn’t mean that mods are victims, just that it is the responsibility of the users to adhere to the rules when they post, not the responsibility of the mods to explain it to hundreds of users individually.
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Why would anyone want to do that? (just kidding!)
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The mod stated that “iNaturalist is know for misidentifications and should not be relied on for ID.” I’m flummoxed.
Any sort of response by folks here is almost certainly going to be based on speculation, as the only person who knows why you were banned is the person who banned you. If you want to know more about their decision, I recommend asking them directly if possible.
I don’t think a discussion a Facebook group’s moderation decision is a particularly productive one for the iNaturalist Forum. Each forum or Facbeook group owner can decide how to moderate it. Anyone who doesn’t like it can start their own forum/group/discord can do so and moderate it however they want.
The broader isssue seems to be others’ perceptions of iNat’s accuracy and how it works. What experiences have people had with these issues, and what has worked/not worked? What could iNat do to improve or change these misperceptions?
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