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Facebook Apologizes After Flagging Declaration of Independence As Hate Speech (nymag.com)

To celebrate this week's holiday, The Vindicator, a small newspaper in Texas, posted sections of the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident." "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." Yadda, yadda. You get the idea. But a section of the text containing the phrase "Indian Savages" set off Facebook's hate-speech flags. The post was then temporarily taken down by Facebook, Business Insider reports. From a report: He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. After The Vindicator ran a story on the censorship, Facebook corrected the mistake. "The post was removed by mistake and restored as soon as we looked into it. We process millions of reports each week, and sometimes we get things wrong," a Facebook spokesperson said. And honestly, as far as Facebook getting things wrong, this is an ideal "mistake."

7 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Filters should not replace human review. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Even Wikipedia has filters now, I gave up editing after my edits kept getting "your edits have been automatically been identified by a filter as unconstructive". Wikipedia has probably lost more edits to that than the recently rejected EU copyright filters.

    1. Re: Filters should not replace human review. by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's weird. I would have expected it would be because you do things like randomly repeating words in a way that makes the sentence nonsensical :-)

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  2. Re:Facebook hates America by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Funny

    TLDR: Hey Britain, we're breaking up with you.

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    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  3. Re:Facebook hates America by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

    Good thing this doesn't happen anymore.

  4. Re:Facebook hates America by jnaujok · · Score: 5, Funny

    I believe the comment made by one historian (Clay Jenkinson) was, "Thomas Jefferson was the only one of the Founding Fathers that could have written the Declaration with that grandiose style. If George Washington would have written the Declaration of Independence, it would have read, 'We Quit!'"

    --
    Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
  5. But wait, there's more! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    How many of you remember when NPR tweeted out the Declaration of Independence line by line and a bunch of Trump supporters got mad because they thought it was about Trump? It happened last year, and it happened again this year.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/julia...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  6. Yes, apparently I am 12 by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

    I reached this one section and immediately thought of Beevis and Butthead:

    ”He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people”

    Hehe. Hehe. “Manly Firmness” hehe. Hehe.

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    #DeleteChrome