This is the Passage of The Declaration of Independence That Facebook Deemed "Hate Speech"
That’s right folks–according to the Facebook Storm Troopers, the Declaration of Independence contains “hate speech” worthy of censorship.
It’s not that it’s that surprising that the Facebook “community standard” bots hate liberty, it’s just that to learn that a post containing the text the Declaration of Independence itself was removed, the week of Independence Day, no less, is a step too far.
The Daily Wire has the story:
As a way of celebrating Independence Day, The Vindicator thought it would be appropriate to publish the Declaration of Independence on Facebook. To make the reading of it more manageable online, the outlet broke the famous founding document into twelve “bite-sized” segments and posted one a day over a period of 12 days, ending on July 4. But after posting the tenth segment, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook informing them that the post “goes against our standards on hate speech” and had been blocked.
After the outlet complained about the censorship, Facebook restored the post on the evening of July 3, explaining that its automated “Community Standards” checker had incorrectly flagged the post. While Facebook’s relatively prompt reversal was welcomed, the incident highlights how information is handled on the platform and what types of expression can be blocked.
This is the passage of the Declaration that was so “hateful”:
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
Advertisement - story continues belowHe has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
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.
The Vindicator has an idea as to why it might have been flagged by the Facebook bots, and if you guessed it was due to political correctness on overdrive was the culprit, you’d be correct:
While The Vindicator cannot be certain exactly what triggered Facebook’s filtering program, the editor suspects it was most likely the phrase “Indian Savages.”
Perhaps had Thomas Jefferson written it as “Native Americans at a challenging stage of cultural development” that would have been better.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: Facebook’s censorship is obviously entirely too out of control.
