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."

Comments

Re: If it were written today

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you know, we can admit that "savages" describes tribal people with little technological advancement who raped and murdered each other for 10,000 years before white people showed up, then happily raped and murdered them too.

Part of your anti-white washing of history conveniently ignores the genocidal brutality of the native population. White people were more effective, but certainly not any more brutal.

Re: If it were written today

[Zero__Kelvin]

So I guess nobody told you, but "savage" was an accurate description of Native Americans circa the 1700s. I agree many would be upset, but it would be in the "contemporary tradition" of people getting upset at facts that clash with their carefully constructed facade of "alternative facts."