Alleged hate speech: Algorithm sorts out paragraphs 27 to 31
The founding document of the USA appears to be politically incorrect for Facebook's algorithm.
The news magazine Liberty County Vindicator has published daily excerpts from the Declaration of Independence of the United States in the run-up to today's Independence Day. One of these posts was automatically removed by the social network.
Automated process
The first nine excerpts from the founding document could be published on Facebook without any problems.
“But part 10 didn’t appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a message from Facebook saying the post 'violated our hate speech standards,'"
explains editor-in-chief Casey Stinnett. The passage in question contained paragraphs 27 to 31 of the Declaration of Independence. It is the grievances section of the document in which the beleaguered colonists lay out any differences they had with Britain's King George III. had.
Stinnett, however, only has a vague guess as to which part of Facebook's algorithm might have gone wrong. He assumes that paragraph 31 has been reported to the “intelligent system” as a threat. It says:
“(…) to bring upon our border inhabitants the merciless wild Indians, whose well-known practice of waging war is to slaughter everything without distinction of age, gender and status.”
Lots of worries about censorship
The post was removed automatically. Stinnett then sent a “feedback message” to Facebook with the hopes of reaching someone who could free the Declaration of Independence from the algorithm’s strict guidelines.
Fearing that sharing the alleged hate speech could trigger the deletion of the Liberty County Vindicator Facebook page, the editorial team has decided to suspend sharing of the Declaration of Independence.
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1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

