DES MOINES, Iowa – The Facebook page is called “The People Of The Iowa State Fair,” but the Iowa State Fair itself wants nothing to do with it.
“We don’t have any affiliation with it,” said Lori Chappell, the spokesperson for the Iowa State Fair.
The Facebook page allows people to post pictures taken at the fair. Some pictures depict fun, fair activities, like riding the sky glider. Others mock fairgoers for their attire, their weight or their assumed sexual orientation. Almost any picture, or comment, is fair game.
“It’s kind of a hurtful Facebook page,” said Chappell.
According to Chappell, the state fair has filed a complaint with Facebook and asked that the page be taken down, but the response remains the same. “We keep getting back from them, ‘It doesn’t violate community standards.’ So they don’t do anything about it.”
Brett Bullis did something when she saw a picture of her 5-year-old nephew on the page. People commenting on the picture criticized the boy’s grandmother for tethering him to her with what some called a “leash.”
Bullis expressed her anger in a comment on the page and said, “I still enjoy seeing the silliness of what some people will wear to the fair… I just think kids should be off-limits to make fun of.”
The picture of Bullis’ nephew has been taken down, but you’ll find plenty of other pictures of children and adults who have no idea their pictures are being taken, let alone posted on a public site.
Even more frustrating, Chappell said the fair has no idea who is administering the Facebook page. “We’ve done a little of our own investigating, but have not come up with anything.”
The person, or entity, who administers the page remains anonymous.
A person claiming to be the page administrator did reach out to The Des Moines Register’s Kyle Munson in August of 2013. “At the inception of the page, I was sharing all posts by others. Many were funny, some were mean. But at the beginning we wanted content, so we put up everything,” the statement said. “This is Facebook, so if someone gets too far out of line, they stand to face the consequences for their words. I do not feel that I must have and enforce my own matching set of standards when Facebook’s standards still apply here.”
Some people commenting on the pictures call it “bullying at an adult level.”
That may be the case, but attorneys said there are few legal remedies to the situation. People posting and commenting are protected by the right to free speech. It’s not a privacy issue either, because the fairgrounds are public property.
Some say the page is a sign of the times – a time when comments, no matter how crude, can be disseminated to the masses in a matter of seconds. There’s no way to stop it, but as one person commented on the page, “You should be ashamed.”
We reached out to the administrators of the Facebook page and received this response:
“We would be happy to answer questions or make a statement, but the name(s) of our administration team are irrelevant. The fact is that this is a voluntary public forum, and the content and comments are entirely posted by users. Each post has with it the name (which is a link) of the person who posted it, thereby taking personal responsibility and accountability for their own posts and comments. The administrators of this page do not go to the fair and take these pics, nor do we search the internet for content. Everything is posted by the users. The page has gotten over 20,000 likes, 2,000 content posts, and over 1,000,000 comments in the past week, and policing that kind of influx of content is impossible for an unpaid staff. Plus we highly revere free speech here. The people on this page are still on facebook, and still regulated by all the terms of service applicable; if someone gets beligerant or hateful, they can be removed. We do always work with people when a specific item causes problems, and we remove these posts promptly. People watching is one of the great traditions of the Iowa State Fair, and this site was made to allow people worldwide to enjoy that. I would be happy to answer any further questions you have or make a more elaborate statement if you would like, but identities of admins here are 100% irrelevant. This idea has been put into the world, and embraced by 63,000+ people- if I took the site down tomorrow, someone else would have a new one by the end of the day. And they may not moderate it with the same considerations we do. They may be unwilling to remove items. They may add hateful captions. We do none of that, and we do not encourage anyone else to. But 63,000 people in a free open forum will ultimately do as they wish with no regard to our attempts to change, censor, or stop them. The one with the most control is the user. The internet is full of offensive and disgusting things, and if I stumble across a website that offends me, I re-direct my browser elsewhere immediately and do not go back. People here will like the page, browse through hundreds of photos, and then express how offended they are. But they came here and stayed here by their own free will. We cannot protect people from themselves, nor should we be expected to. This page is here for fun, and I will concede that people posting rude comments are jerks- and they are putting their names on what they say. Looking for who to hold accountable for offensive content? The page is literally an itemized list.“