POO NEWS: LINKEDIN SAYS IT PROHIBITS HATE AND HARASSMENT. THEN EXPLAIN THIS.
LinkedIn says it bans harassment and disability-based abuse. So why were comments mocking a disabled Black woman reportedly allowed to stay?
DR
DrShit ·
Disability
#Handicap
#Disability
By Terry Loerch
Look at the image before reading another word. Really look at it, then read what people decided to write underneath it.
A beautiful disabled Black woman is being turned into a joke because of her body. Commenters are making remarks about somebody having “taken a bite” out of her, essentially comparing her body to a piece of chocolate with part of it missing. The humor depends entirely on her skin color, her visible physical difference and the willingness of strangers to reduce a human being to something they can laugh at.
The content was reported to LinkedIn. According to the reporting response associated with the content, LinkedIn reviewed it and did not find a violation serious enough to remove it.
That deserves more than a shrug.
This is LinkedIn, not some anonymous message board operating out of somebody’s basement between a cryptocurrency scam and an advertisement for miracle testosterone pills. LinkedIn markets itself as the professional social network. It has detailed community standards, trained reviewers, automated moderation systems and published policies describing exactly what users supposedly cannot do.
So let’s stop arguing emotionally for a moment and read LinkedIn’s own rules.
LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies state: “We don’t allow bullying or harassment.” The company specifically includes “targeted personal attacks, intimidation, shaming, disparagement, and abusive language” in its description of prohibited behavior.
That seems fairly straightforward.
LinkedIn’s more detailed harassment policy goes even further. It says the company removes content that “personally attacks, intimidates, shames, bullies, disparages” members. One of LinkedIn’s own examples of prohibited harassment is content “disparaging another member’s appearance,” including bodily attributes.
Read that again while looking at the image.
The entire conversation is about her appearance.
The joke is her body.
Her physical difference is the punchline.
Yet somehow we are supposed to believe this sailed through a moderation system operating under a policy that specifically identifies disparaging somebody’s appearance and bodily attributes as examples of harassment.
That is where this story becomes bigger than offensive people making offensive comments. The internet has never suffered from a shortage of idiots. You could probably power several small cities with the energy generated by comment sections alone. The more important question is what happens when the platform receives a report, looks at the content and decides the content is acceptable under its own rules.
LinkedIn’s hateful-content policy makes the contradiction even harder to ignore.
LinkedIn says it does not allow content attacking or denigrating people because of characteristics including race and disability. Its hateful and derogatory content policy specifically says it removes attacks based on “race” and “disability status.”
Again, look at the image.
Nobody needs to use the N-word for racial degradation to exist. Nobody needs to type “I hate disabled people” before disability-based humiliation becomes recognizable.
Context matters.
When a Black woman is compared to chocolate and people joke that part of her body looks as if somebody “took a bite,” race is not some imaginary ingredient critics added afterward. Her skin color is part of what makes the supposed joke function.
When that same joke depends on a visible physical difference involving her body, disability is not incidental either.
The racial component and disability component are sitting directly in front of us.
LinkedIn’s hateful-content guidance even identifies “negative stereotypes, rooted in inherent traits” as an example of content covered by its policy. That matters because modern prejudice is rarely considerate enough to arrive wearing a name tag announcing itself.
Racism has context.
Ableism has context.
Humiliation has context.
A competent moderation system has to understand more than individual forbidden words because people learned a very long time ago how to insult someone without using the exact vocabulary listed in a policy manual.
This is where platforms get into trouble when moderation becomes a giant game of keyword bingo. If nobody typed the magic prohibited word, the system acts confused while the actual human degradation is sitting there waving both hands.
LinkedIn itself says it uses both trained content reviewers and automated systems to identify potentially violating content. It also says its community policies “apply to all members.”
Good.
Then apply them.
If a reported comment is making fun of a woman’s body, compare it with the policy against disparaging appearance and bodily attributes.
If the joke depends on race, compare it with the policy against denigrating people because of race.
If the joke depends on disability or a visible physical difference, compare it with the policy protecting people against attacks based on disability status.
This is not advanced calculus.
The editorial issue here is not whether everyone has to find every joke tasteful. Social networks should not become humor tribunals determining whether a joke deserves three laughs, two laughs or an uncomfortable cough.
The issue is considerably narrower and more important. LinkedIn created its own standards. LinkedIn tells its users those standards protect them. LinkedIn encourages people to report abusive material. LinkedIn says reported content goes through a review process and that appropriate action will be taken.
Once a company makes those promises, it should be prepared to explain decisions that appear to contradict them.
If LinkedIn believes these comments are permitted, I want to know why.
What part of comparing a disabled Black woman’s body to partially eaten chocolate does not qualify as disparaging her appearance?
At what point does a racialized joke become racial degradation under LinkedIn’s standards?
At what point does making somebody’s physical difference the centerpiece of a joke become disability-based disparagement?
Those are legitimate questions. Asking them is not demanding censorship. It is asking a multibillion-dollar professional networking platform to explain how the standards it wrote apply to an actual example sitting on its own service.
There is another issue here that companies frequently underestimate.
Moderation decisions teach communities how to behave.
Every time somebody reports degrading content and a platform decides it can stay, the decision communicates something. The people posting it discover where the fence is. Other users watching discover where the fence is. Eventually everyone figures out how close they can walk to that boundary without consequences.
The woman being mocked receives a message too.
So does every disabled person scrolling past it.
So does every Black professional scrolling past it.
The message is not necessarily that LinkedIn employees approve of the comments. That would be an unfair conclusion without evidence. The message created by the outcome is simpler: this was reported, this was reviewed, and this was allowed.
Intent and outcome are different things.
A moderation system can create biased outcomes without a moderator consciously deciding, “Today I am going to discriminate against somebody.” Bias can enter through automation, inconsistent reviewer training, weak context analysis, badly designed reporting categories, enforcement thresholds or simply one reviewer interpreting a policy differently from another.
That is precisely why major platforms should audit outcomes rather than congratulating themselves for having beautifully written policies.
The policy is not the accomplishment.
Enforcement is.
You can write the greatest anti-harassment policy in the history of corporate America, laminate it, frame it and hang it next to the espresso machine at headquarters. If the system underneath it repeatedly fails to recognize the conduct the policy describes, the framed document is decoration.
LinkedIn has said publicly that it maintains standards for “safe and civil conversations” and removes content that shames, bullies or disparages members.
Then this image should concern LinkedIn.
Not because Poo News says so.
Because LinkedIn’s own policy says so.
This woman should not have to become a case study in whether a social network can recognize racism and ableism when neither arrives packaged in the easiest possible language for a moderation algorithm.
Disabled people have spent generations being transformed into entertainment. They have been stared at, mocked, infantilized and treated as if visible differences somehow transferred ownership of their dignity to everybody else in the room.
Black Americans have their own long and ugly history of racist imagery, dehumanizing comparisons and stereotypes built around physical appearance.
Put those histories together and context becomes extraordinarily important.
That does not mean every insensitive joke involving a Black disabled person automatically constitutes prohibited hate speech. Editorial integrity requires saying that clearly. It does mean moderators should examine the context seriously instead of pretending that only explicit slurs can create discriminatory humiliation.
LinkedIn describes itself as a professional network. Professional should mean something.
It should mean a woman can show up as herself without strangers turning her body into dessert.
It should mean disability is not an invitation for public ridicule.
It should mean Black professionals are not protected only when somebody is careless enough to type an obvious racial slur.
Most importantly, it should mean LinkedIn follows the standards LinkedIn wrote.
This is why Poo News is calling for LinkedIn to review this moderation decision and explain how it fits its published harassment and hateful-content policies. If the company reviews the material again and determines its original decision was wrong, say so and fix it. Companies make mistakes. Moderation at this scale is difficult, and pretending otherwise would be ridiculous.
What matters is what happens after the mistake is exposed.
If LinkedIn still believes these comments comply with its policies, then explain that too. Explain where the line actually is so millions of LinkedIn members understand what the words “harassment,” “disparagement,” “race” and “disability status” mean when those policies leave the corporate webpage and enter the real world.
Because right now there is a serious disconnect between LinkedIn’s written rules and what this moderation outcome appears to permit.
You cannot publish a policy prohibiting the disparagement of somebody’s body, prohibit attacks based on race and disability, invite users to report violations, then expect nobody to ask questions when a disabled Black woman becomes the punchline and the reported content survives.
LinkedIn wrote the rules.
LinkedIn created the reporting system.
LinkedIn reviewed the content.
Now LinkedIn should explain the decision.
Otherwise, all those carefully written promises about dignity, safety and professional conduct start looking less like community standards and more like corporate wallpaper.
At Poo News, we have a fairly uncomplicated standard for this one: if your policy says you clean up the crap, you cannot act surprised when people point to the pile you left sitting in the middle of the room.
Look at the image before reading another word. Really look at it, then read what people decided to write underneath it.
A beautiful disabled Black woman is being turned into a joke because of her body. Commenters are making remarks about somebody having “taken a bite” out of her, essentially comparing her body to a piece of chocolate with part of it missing. The humor depends entirely on her skin color, her visible physical difference and the willingness of strangers to reduce a human being to something they can laugh at.
The content was reported to LinkedIn. According to the reporting response associated with the content, LinkedIn reviewed it and did not find a violation serious enough to remove it.
That deserves more than a shrug.
This is LinkedIn, not some anonymous message board operating out of somebody’s basement between a cryptocurrency scam and an advertisement for miracle testosterone pills. LinkedIn markets itself as the professional social network. It has detailed community standards, trained reviewers, automated moderation systems and published policies describing exactly what users supposedly cannot do.
So let’s stop arguing emotionally for a moment and read LinkedIn’s own rules.
LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies state: “We don’t allow bullying or harassment.” The company specifically includes “targeted personal attacks, intimidation, shaming, disparagement, and abusive language” in its description of prohibited behavior.
That seems fairly straightforward.
LinkedIn’s more detailed harassment policy goes even further. It says the company removes content that “personally attacks, intimidates, shames, bullies, disparages” members. One of LinkedIn’s own examples of prohibited harassment is content “disparaging another member’s appearance,” including bodily attributes.
Read that again while looking at the image.
The entire conversation is about her appearance.
The joke is her body.
Her physical difference is the punchline.
Yet somehow we are supposed to believe this sailed through a moderation system operating under a policy that specifically identifies disparaging somebody’s appearance and bodily attributes as examples of harassment.
That is where this story becomes bigger than offensive people making offensive comments. The internet has never suffered from a shortage of idiots. You could probably power several small cities with the energy generated by comment sections alone. The more important question is what happens when the platform receives a report, looks at the content and decides the content is acceptable under its own rules.
LinkedIn’s hateful-content policy makes the contradiction even harder to ignore.
LinkedIn says it does not allow content attacking or denigrating people because of characteristics including race and disability. Its hateful and derogatory content policy specifically says it removes attacks based on “race” and “disability status.”
Again, look at the image.
Nobody needs to use the N-word for racial degradation to exist. Nobody needs to type “I hate disabled people” before disability-based humiliation becomes recognizable.
Context matters.
When a Black woman is compared to chocolate and people joke that part of her body looks as if somebody “took a bite,” race is not some imaginary ingredient critics added afterward. Her skin color is part of what makes the supposed joke function.
When that same joke depends on a visible physical difference involving her body, disability is not incidental either.
The racial component and disability component are sitting directly in front of us.
LinkedIn’s hateful-content guidance even identifies “negative stereotypes, rooted in inherent traits” as an example of content covered by its policy. That matters because modern prejudice is rarely considerate enough to arrive wearing a name tag announcing itself.
Racism has context.
Ableism has context.
Humiliation has context.
A competent moderation system has to understand more than individual forbidden words because people learned a very long time ago how to insult someone without using the exact vocabulary listed in a policy manual.
This is where platforms get into trouble when moderation becomes a giant game of keyword bingo. If nobody typed the magic prohibited word, the system acts confused while the actual human degradation is sitting there waving both hands.
LinkedIn itself says it uses both trained content reviewers and automated systems to identify potentially violating content. It also says its community policies “apply to all members.”
Good.
Then apply them.
If a reported comment is making fun of a woman’s body, compare it with the policy against disparaging appearance and bodily attributes.
If the joke depends on race, compare it with the policy against denigrating people because of race.
If the joke depends on disability or a visible physical difference, compare it with the policy protecting people against attacks based on disability status.
This is not advanced calculus.
The editorial issue here is not whether everyone has to find every joke tasteful. Social networks should not become humor tribunals determining whether a joke deserves three laughs, two laughs or an uncomfortable cough.
The issue is considerably narrower and more important. LinkedIn created its own standards. LinkedIn tells its users those standards protect them. LinkedIn encourages people to report abusive material. LinkedIn says reported content goes through a review process and that appropriate action will be taken.
Once a company makes those promises, it should be prepared to explain decisions that appear to contradict them.
If LinkedIn believes these comments are permitted, I want to know why.
What part of comparing a disabled Black woman’s body to partially eaten chocolate does not qualify as disparaging her appearance?
At what point does a racialized joke become racial degradation under LinkedIn’s standards?
At what point does making somebody’s physical difference the centerpiece of a joke become disability-based disparagement?
Those are legitimate questions. Asking them is not demanding censorship. It is asking a multibillion-dollar professional networking platform to explain how the standards it wrote apply to an actual example sitting on its own service.
There is another issue here that companies frequently underestimate.
Moderation decisions teach communities how to behave.
Every time somebody reports degrading content and a platform decides it can stay, the decision communicates something. The people posting it discover where the fence is. Other users watching discover where the fence is. Eventually everyone figures out how close they can walk to that boundary without consequences.
The woman being mocked receives a message too.
So does every disabled person scrolling past it.
So does every Black professional scrolling past it.
The message is not necessarily that LinkedIn employees approve of the comments. That would be an unfair conclusion without evidence. The message created by the outcome is simpler: this was reported, this was reviewed, and this was allowed.
Intent and outcome are different things.
A moderation system can create biased outcomes without a moderator consciously deciding, “Today I am going to discriminate against somebody.” Bias can enter through automation, inconsistent reviewer training, weak context analysis, badly designed reporting categories, enforcement thresholds or simply one reviewer interpreting a policy differently from another.
That is precisely why major platforms should audit outcomes rather than congratulating themselves for having beautifully written policies.
The policy is not the accomplishment.
Enforcement is.
You can write the greatest anti-harassment policy in the history of corporate America, laminate it, frame it and hang it next to the espresso machine at headquarters. If the system underneath it repeatedly fails to recognize the conduct the policy describes, the framed document is decoration.
LinkedIn has said publicly that it maintains standards for “safe and civil conversations” and removes content that shames, bullies or disparages members.
Then this image should concern LinkedIn.
Not because Poo News says so.
Because LinkedIn’s own policy says so.
This woman should not have to become a case study in whether a social network can recognize racism and ableism when neither arrives packaged in the easiest possible language for a moderation algorithm.
Disabled people have spent generations being transformed into entertainment. They have been stared at, mocked, infantilized and treated as if visible differences somehow transferred ownership of their dignity to everybody else in the room.
Black Americans have their own long and ugly history of racist imagery, dehumanizing comparisons and stereotypes built around physical appearance.
Put those histories together and context becomes extraordinarily important.
That does not mean every insensitive joke involving a Black disabled person automatically constitutes prohibited hate speech. Editorial integrity requires saying that clearly. It does mean moderators should examine the context seriously instead of pretending that only explicit slurs can create discriminatory humiliation.
LinkedIn describes itself as a professional network. Professional should mean something.
It should mean a woman can show up as herself without strangers turning her body into dessert.
It should mean disability is not an invitation for public ridicule.
It should mean Black professionals are not protected only when somebody is careless enough to type an obvious racial slur.
Most importantly, it should mean LinkedIn follows the standards LinkedIn wrote.
This is why Poo News is calling for LinkedIn to review this moderation decision and explain how it fits its published harassment and hateful-content policies. If the company reviews the material again and determines its original decision was wrong, say so and fix it. Companies make mistakes. Moderation at this scale is difficult, and pretending otherwise would be ridiculous.
What matters is what happens after the mistake is exposed.
If LinkedIn still believes these comments comply with its policies, then explain that too. Explain where the line actually is so millions of LinkedIn members understand what the words “harassment,” “disparagement,” “race” and “disability status” mean when those policies leave the corporate webpage and enter the real world.
Because right now there is a serious disconnect between LinkedIn’s written rules and what this moderation outcome appears to permit.
You cannot publish a policy prohibiting the disparagement of somebody’s body, prohibit attacks based on race and disability, invite users to report violations, then expect nobody to ask questions when a disabled Black woman becomes the punchline and the reported content survives.
LinkedIn wrote the rules.
LinkedIn created the reporting system.
LinkedIn reviewed the content.
Now LinkedIn should explain the decision.
Otherwise, all those carefully written promises about dignity, safety and professional conduct start looking less like community standards and more like corporate wallpaper.
At Poo News, we have a fairly uncomplicated standard for this one: if your policy says you clean up the crap, you cannot act surprised when people point to the pile you left sitting in the middle of the room.