Facebook censors the American Declaration of Independence for Racism

To celebrate July 4, Independence Day, a Texas-based newspaper called The Vindicator decided to post on its Facebook page excerpts from an old copy of the Declaration of Independence . The document, written by Thomas Jefferson, dates back to 1776. While flipping through the photos accompanying the post, the authors realized that he was missing a copy, part 10. Also, thanks to a notification from Facebook, where he informed them that the content violated the standards of the platform . Due to hatred and racist incitement references

The problem with this paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which Facebook's algorithm found inappropriately, is reduced to three words : Merciless Indian Indians or ruthless Indians. Jefferson, in the distant eighteenth century, referred to the Indians, still considered an enemy to conquer and intellectually underdeveloped compared to the white population. But, as pointed out by the director of The Vindicator Casey Stinnett: Unfortunately, like many other settlers of the time, he did not have a great vision of Native Americans. Of course, Facebook's algorithm could not understand that the text was referring to a very distant historical period, but judged it on the basis of pure content, extrapolating it from the context . A robot trained to identify a politically incorrect language that is not smart enough to understand when it is part of a meaningful historical document, said Reason Deputy Director Christian Britschgi

Shortly after Facebook has realized the error and suppressed censorship at the post office. With much apology on the page: It seems that we made a mistake and removed something that shared on Facebook that does not go against the standards of the community they were seen to inform The Vindicator . Okay, then. Or almost. It remains the eternal problem of giving content management to an algorithm which – independently, but certainly not reliable – can decide what is acceptable to allow us to have on the board. display and what else. arrived with photographs historical (he made scandal when he eclipsed the symbolic image of the war in Vietnam), with executives L & # 39; origin of the world by Gustave Coubet for example) and now with a historical document . And it seems that despite the efforts of the social network, simply do not want to learn to distinguish art and literature from insults and badgraphy.