Facebook’s bots labelled the US Declaration of Independence as ‘hate speech’, right before Independence Day

When a Texan newspaper uploaded small sections of the US Declaration of Independence to its Facebook page this week, it didn’t expect to get called out by the tech giant for hate speech.

Facebook’s algorithmic censors, which monitor posts for violations of its community guidelines, prevented the Liberty County Vindicator from uploading an extract from the historic text which refers to “merciless Indian savages”. The paper later received a notice saying the post went against its standards on hate speech.

“Somewhere in paragraphs 27-31 of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote something that Facebook finds offensive,” said Casey Stinnett, the paper’s managing editor in an article on its website.

Though Facebook didn’t specify exactly what in the post it found to be in contravention to its guidelines, Stinnet believes it would most likely be the line the phrase “Indian savages” that tipped it off.

He criticised the use of algorithmic censors by Facebook to monitor community pages, saying that he is sure a human would not make the same judgement of the Declaration.

Stinnett added that Facebook continues to make it extremely hard to contact them in the case of an appeal, despite the social media platform’s vice president on global policy Monica Bickert saying earlier this year that Facebook is “going to build out the ability for people to appeal our decisions”.

Facebook restored the post early this morning, apologising to The Vindicator for any inconvenience or miscommunication.

Stinnett concluded that while the situation was frustrating, “to enjoy the study of history a person must love irony”.

“It is a very great irony that the words of Thomas Jefferson should now be censored in America.”