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

If it were written today

[Oswald McWeany]

In context of the 21st century, I think if it were written today plenty of people WOULD have a problem with the sentence "Indian Savages". Obviously the declaration of Independence wasn't intended as a "hate piece" but by today's morality I can't blame Facebook for automatically filtering it out per algorithm.

I'm not a fan of Facebook or censorship (although I think a private entity like Facebook has a right to keep content non-objectionable ON THEIR SITE- but not off it) but I think there is nothing wrong with Facebook's algorithm in this case- it did what it was written to do- it caught unwanted language on it's system.

I'm pretty sure a lot of Mark Twain's work would rightly get blocked too.

Re: If it were written today

[Anonymous Coward]

the genocidal brutality of the native population.

Different regions had different perspectives on war. Some of the pre-US tribes had a semi-civilized diplomatic system before they engaged in any sort of organized violence, but no method to even identify stray cross-tribe killings. Some tribes held an oddly simple revenge model, where any offense was met by a raid, with no actual concern for how much death or damage was done. There is a region where until a few decades ago, all offenses or suspected offenses were punished by death (it was the second generation of missionaries that was able to contact them alive). Some regions saw any inter-tribal offense as grounds to kill the other tribe entirely (until some pale-skinned boat-riders with a wierd language offered booze and guns in exchange for enslaving other tribes).

Not all tribal cultures were genocidal, but most human cultures have a history of brutality (otherwise they would've been conquered by another culture).

Re: If it were written today

[c6gunner]

Indian savages were the bioweapons of their time; indiscriminate killing machines paid off by the crown to slaughter it's enemies. Got a settlement that's giving you trouble? Offer the Indians some beads, guns, and booze. No more settlement.

Of course it was a bioweapon that also had a mind of it's own and tended to blow up in your face, which was rather a large downside.

Re: If it were written today

[ceoyoyo]

Sure, because the Royal Proclamation of 1763 wasn't a thing, and the young United States of America didn't pursue westward expansion, manifest destiny, continentalism, or any of those other nasty bits. Jefferson himself didn't preside over the Louisiana purchase, opening up quite a bit of territory west of the Mississippi. Jefferson was extremely anti-slavery, not being himself a prominent slave owner, and he immediately freed all his slaves as soon as the declaration was signed.

The British weren't saints. Neither were the American colonists, nor the native Americans.

Re: If it were written today

[c6gunner]

Yep, communism wins. Also crusades are a shit example; they pale in comparison to the very similar Islamic rampages through Europe. Then there's Genghis Khan, who probably beats both of them combined when it comes to the body count.

Holocaust is a decent example though. Not because of "the numbers", though. We're talking about barbarity, and the total death toll is just one aspect of it.

Re: Um... they're not wrong

[Bing Tsher E]

It isn't a phrase that necessarily calls all indians savages. It calls out the particular indians who were coaxed into savagery by the Britons.