They've gotta be kidding, right?

[rogue06]

Source: Facebook flags Declaration of Independence as hate speech

In the week of America’s Independence Day, the algorithms of Facebook decided that the Declaration of Independence was hate speech.

The Liberty County Vindicator, a community newspaper between Houston and Beaumont, had been posting the whole declaration in small daily chunks for nine days on its Facebook page in the run-up to July 4. But the 10th excerpt was not posted Monday as scheduled, and the paper said it received an automated notice saying the post “goes against our standards on hate speech.”

Part of the standard notice, Vindicator managing editor Casey Stinnett wrote, included a warning that the newspaper could lose its Facebook account, on which it depends for much of its reach, if there were more violations.

The offending passage?

It was part of the document’s “Bill of Particulars” against Britain’s King George III: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured 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.”

Mr. Stinnett dryly replied in an article about the rejection, “Perhaps had Thomas Jefferson written it as ‘Native Americans at a challenging stage of cultural development’ that would have been better. Unfortunately, Jefferson, like most British colonists of his day, did not hold an entirely friendly view of Native Americans.”

He noted that the newspaper wanted “a means of contacting Facebook for an explanation or a opportunity to appeal the post’s removal, but it does not appear the folks at Facebook want anyone contacting them. Or, at least, they do not make it easy.”

Within a day, Facebook had paid heed, allowing the posting and sending the Vindicator an apology.

“It looks like we made a mistake and removed something you posted on Facebook that didn’t go against our Community Standards. We want to apologize and let you know that we’ve restored your content and removed any blocks on your account related to this incorrect action,” Facebook wrote back, the Vindicator reported.

Reason magazine pointed out how Facebook’s actions were “silly” but also the inevitable logic of massive social-media sites trying to police millions of messages, a task that cannot be done by humans.

“They demonstrate a problem with automated enforcement of hate speech policies, which is that a robot trained to spot politically incorrect language isn’t smart enough to detect when that language is part of a historically significant document,” wrote Christian Britschgi, an assistant editor at the libertarian magazine.

Mr. Britschgi went on to note a perverse result of allowing the Vindicator’s first nine excerpts from the Declaration but not the tenth, exactly because of what he called “clearly racist” language.

The phrasing “serves as another example of the American Revolution’s mixed legacy; one that won crucial liberties for a certain segment of the population, while continuing to deny those same liberties to Native Americans and African slaves. But by allowing the less controversial parts of the declaration to be shared while deleting the reference to ‘Indian savages,’ Facebook succeeds only in whitewashing America’s founding just as we get ready to celebrate it,” he wrote.



Source

© Copyright Original Source

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Didn't someone here recently ask me why I avoid Facebook like the plague it is?

[Cow Poke]

I was just about to post this. This is such a riot.

[rogue06]

I was just about to post this. This is such a riot.

It sure says a lot about what Facebook will be censoring as "hate speech"

[Cow Poke]

It sure says a lot about what Facebook will be censoring as "hate speech"

Just imagine what they would have done with some of the "discussions" we had as kids!

[rogue06]

Just imagine what they would have done with some of the "discussions" we had as kids!

You said "cuss" smiley snicker.gif

[rogue06]

Militant atheist Jerry Coyne seems to be defending Facebook's initial reaction (kind of hard to tell):

Yes, Facebook apologized and restored the document, but perhaps that wouldn’t have happened had the offending words not been part of an important historical document.The sad thing is that if this wasn’t part of the Declaration of Independence, but perhaps a quote from Laura Ingalls Wilder, Facebook might have continued the ban. After all, hate speech is hate speech, even if it reflects mores no longer held, and why should the Declaration of Independence be exempt? I can easily seeing that quote triggering people, as similar quotes did when they came from Little House on the Prairie.

Maybe the real problem is how so many people today are looking very hard for something to offend them

[Teallaura]

The problem was FB using computers to do a human job.

[Starlight]

I'm curious how you guys feel about the treatment of the native Americans by the US colonists of that period...?

[Cow Poke]

I'm curious how you guys feel about the treatment of the native Americans by the US colonists of that period...?

I wasn't there.

[rogue06]

I'm curious how you guys feel about the treatment of the native Americans by the US colonists of that period...?

Pretty bad. Kind of like how New Zealand settlers treated the Maori.

In the early years the sheer numbers of Native Americans meant they could actively resist encroachment but after the U.S. won its independence and the population grew as well as becoming increasingly industrialized it got lopsided pretty quick.

But all of this is the subject for another thread.

[rogue06]

I wasn't there.

Most of my ancestors came to America after the Civil War.

[Starlight]

I wasn't there.

You weren't there for the declaration of independence either, yet you felt it appropriate to weigh in on a thread about that. You're allowed to think an event was right or wrong even if you weren't there. It strikes me as moral cowardice on your part to try and hide behind such a flimsy excuse.

Pretty bad.

Ok, but you apparently celebrate the full text of the declaration of independence rather than merely the historical notion of achieving independence from Britain, and are upset at the thought of someone objecting to nasty things it says about Native Americans? It's one thing to say "we got independence for our country, yay!" it's quite another thing to say "I endorse each and every sentence of the full text of the declaration of independence, including nasty things it says about native peoples" which is the thrust of this thread.

Kind of like how New Zealand settlers treated the Maori.

Nope. The historical interactions were pretty different. While there were some wrongs done in NZ that continue to be addressed with government reparations in the present day, the colonization of NZ came centuries later than the Americas, and there was a conscious effort by many of the settlers to not repeat mistakes of the past in terms of how they treated the natives. A rather major difference I would point to is that there was no genocide of the natives here.

[Cow Poke]

Do you really do that in real life?

You weren't there for the declaration of independence either, yet you felt it appropriate to weigh in on a thread about that.

I can read the Declaration of Independence for myself. It's an actual document.

It strikes me as moral cowardice on your part to try and hide behind such a flimsy excuse.

It strikes me as more trolling on your part to try to make that an issue.

[KingsGambit]

At least the last couple of years, NPR's Twitter account has posted the Declaration of Independence tweet by tweet on July 4. Both times, people angrily accused them of treason.

[MaxVel]

Ok, but you apparently celebrate the full text of the declaration of independence rather than merely the historical notion of achieving independence from Britain, and are upset at the thought of someone objecting to nasty things it says about Native Americans? It's one thing to say "we got independence for our country, yay!" it's quite another thing to say "I endorse each and every sentence of the full text of the declaration of independence, including nasty things it says about native peoples" which is the thrust of this thread.

Clearly it's not. That is your strawman, because your prejudice against Christians and conservatives forces you to assume motives and actions in them that do not exist.