It’s a huge problem, David. As an LGBTQ advocate, writer, and educator, I struggle constantly with Facebook’s bias against discussions of sexuality even in a political context.

So do lots of other LGBT folks on Facebook who try to use the platform to address the public about issues that matter.

I find Twitter to be much more accommodating, but then I don’t write explicitly about sex.

Just leaving Facebook, though, isn’t much of an answer. Even though I have to struggle with it suppressing my voice and limiting my distribution, I can still sometimes get more readership there than anywhere else.

The story I published on Medium yesterday (about the Catholic church in Spokane pulling children out of an event with an LGBT astronaut) has almost 10,000 views from Facebook already.

That’s the kind of potential for reach that the platform offers. And as an advocate, it’s not the kind of potential that I can just throw away.

I am very frustrated, though, by how casually Facebook suppresses points of view and limits speech. In many ways they have become a de facto Public Square, but in controlling it so strictly, they effectively strangle the free speech that they claim to be enabling.