US Declaration of Independence labeled hate speech by Facebook bots

Facebook’s content-cleansing bots have flagged the United States Declaration of Independence as hate speech.

The Liberty County Vindicator, a newspaper serving Liberty, Texas, posted “small bites” from the Declaration on its Facebook page in the leadup to the USA’s July 4th Independence Day, “To make it a little easier to digest that short but formidable historic document”.

But as the paper detailed on July 2nd, “The first nine parts posted as scheduled, but part 10, consisting of paragraphs 27-31 of the Declaration, did not appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post ‘goes against our standards on hate speech’.”