Facebook Banned Excerpt of the Declaration of Independence as 'Hate Speech'
Social media censorship of undesirable truth has been growing in the past few years. YouTube has purged many "truther" users who spoke about various issues that run counter to the establishments narrative of how they want everyone to believe reality to be. People can complain to the social media authorities in order to censor content or shutdown users.
flickr/public domain, pixabay
A recent censorship ban on Facebook came as the result of posting a section of the US Declaration of Independence. The Vindicator is a Texas-based newspaper with an online presence. It's self-described as "[t]he oldest continuously printing news source in South Liberty County since 1887", using the slogan "liberty country" above their site name as they are located in Liberty. Texas. They had been posting sections of the Declaration of Independence and posting them to FB:
Leading up to Independence Day, The Vindicator challenged its Facebook followers to read the Declaration of Independence. To make it a little easier to digest that short but formidable historic document, the newspaper broke the Declaration down into 12 small bites and one to post each morning from June 24 to July 4.
On their July 2nd posting, Facebook banned the post for "hate speech", asking them to remove anything that doesn't comply with Facebook's policies. The banned post was of paragraphs 27-31 of the Declaration of Independence:
"He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He 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."
Critics began to put pressure on Facebook as a result of this ban on the Declaration of Independence. Facebook has buckled under the pressure and has since apologized for flagging a section of the Declaration as "hate speech".
The Vindicator thinks it was an automatic filter in place at Facebook which took the phrase "Indian savages" as the hate speech. Yet, they conclude that the passage could have more "that could be thought hateful." The Vindicator seems to be tolerant of what Facebook did, stating:
Facebook is a business corporation, not the government, and as such it is allowed to restrict use of its services as long as those restrictions do not violate any laws. Plus, The Vindicator is using Facebook for free, so the newspaper has little grounds for complaint other than the silliness of it.
For a paper that boast of being in "Liberty County", they don't seem too concerned about being free speech issues, so long as it's not about the government doing the restricting. The Vindicator goes on to say that they are too dependent on Facebook to reach it's readership. Their thousands of page views for stories only come at the behest of links being shared on Facebook. As such, they even thought of foregoing their last two posts of the Declaration of Independence, because:
Should Facebook find anything in them offensive, The Vindicator could lose its Facebook page.
After Facebook restored their post that shouldn't have been taken down in the first place, the Vindicator applauded Facebook, saying "the good folks at Facebook restored the post". I guess tyrants are "good", as long as they sometimes reverse their tyrannical behavior.
Posting excerpts of a significant historical document and it getting banned isn't an issue anymore. Facebook is so nice. Forget about all the other pages that are being taken down because they are deemed to be spreading "fake news", i.e. information Facebook deems doesn't comply with the establishments "version" of truth.
This is a paper that touts it's location being in Liberty, Texas, yet bows down to Facebook tyranny and the banning of a text that was about ending tyranny. The Declaration talks about no longer having to serve a King, for all people to be free from that control and being able to speak freely. Yet the Vindicator is bowing to the Facebook King and fears speaking about the Declaration on Facebook as they might get their account closed by the tyrannical king.
A vindicator is supposed to be someone who vidicates, from Latin vindicātus, with such meanings as set free; protect, avenge, punish; to liberate; to act as avenger. It doesn't seem like the Vindicator is living up to the name it uses. It's cowering to Facebook, rather than protecting, avenging or fighting for freedom of speech.
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I read about this, what a bunch of rejects. It's their "algorithm" that picked this up. Not that any of those Lib-tards ever read the declaration of Independence anyway...
Yes it was automated, but it still happened ;)
Yeah, not making excuses one bit. Good post! ;)
How embarrassing for Facebook; to flag the foundation of our government at hate speech. Facebook proves time and time again that they are becoming antiquated.
Yeah, social media 1.0 is killing itself.
Makes a good story. Here is a fun fact: Posts made in Czech Republic are controlled by people in Republic of South Africa. They don't know the language and can hardly judge what is appropriate and what is not. As a result of that, sometimes, documentaries about native tribes freely available anywhere to anyone are banned for nudity, even though nudity is allowed for educational purposes. Another case I witnessed was a massive campaign against one political movement, which's page got reported by many and was banned as a result of that. Again, it was for nudity. Can you imagine political movements sharing nudity? They were actually sharing a snapshot of a comedy, which was again acessible to anyone children included.
Can serious company afford such serrious mistakes? I believe if the given political movement wanted, they can challenge them for a trial and win.
It's truly related to the conspiracy and that conspiracy is taking away the Right Of Speech, and we should stand against it because it's not about the few but this conspiracy is spreading like viral at Global levels.
YouTube is really behaving harshly towards the truth speaking individuals and also showcasing the highest levels of censorship. And many true content creators who are striving hard for the truth are facing the continuous abusive behaviour.
Yes, where evil exists we see some light in the form of good people and there were many people who came out of the Facebook because they confessed that Facebook is not good for society because it's playing with their minds and emotions.
So, we have to understand what is good and what is bad and for sure centralised social networking platforms are more showcasing the mind controlling behaviours and it's always pushing people to engage in those stuff which is just waste of time and this means more towards misleading stuff.
I would be adressing more criticism towards Germany and countries, which force Facebook to do the censorship upon us than the fact it is a centralized company. It is no secret that censoring information is not in the best interest of the corporation as they might lose users. What is in their best interest are adverts, which is the only money-making part of Facebook, Youtube and other.
These centralized platforms are only thinking about their hidden interests and in my opinion they are experts of manipulation.
I think they care mostly about profit. It's probably true that if they are offered some millions from medical company for censoring traditional medicine, they will do it. But there should be country, which can stop the censorship if it gets too harsh. It seems, there are only countries supporting it, which is the root of the problem in my opinion.
About manipulation. Soviet intelligence once stated it is not necessary to convince otherwise. It is just good if you create doubts. In todays streams of information, which often contradict** each other, people are left confused. I am in nutrition and research discovered that most people don't eat healthily, because they don't know what is healthily. In my opinion, those who do think they do often don't eat healthily as well. SImilar for politics, where most people don't know if EU is good to stay on or better to leave in my country. So on second thought I agree whether we call it manipulation or confussion. But I think the main reason behind this is income, nothing else. At least from the side of the given companies running social media and search engines.
**should it be contradict-s??
In my opinion, profits and other stuff are illusionary and they are just tools to control people. The secret conspiracy is ONE CONTROL, and in my opinion conspiracy is to make people slaves and all these centralised platforms, media and specially the subject of information and fake news, all these aspects covers the mind control and more influence towards our mind. If you observe then we are fully covered by the advertisements but true people never need all these stuff instead they need natural and simplistic life and they are away from the materialistic.
Remember one thing, what we see and understand that is just upper layer, and there are so much going on which time will reveal but we have to understand one thing, no people is different and we all belongs to one tribe and that is Humanity, and all these geographies and different borders are illusionary lines which is created to spread the hate for fellow people and that's why nowadays we see more geographical wars and in this differentiation only common people get hurt and controllers and elites accomplishing their agendas. So if we are collectively standing for each other, and if we spread the brotherhood then we can make this world beautiful.
Wishing you an great day and stay blessed. 🙂
Well the platform and sharing content is good, bu what company youtube is doing isn't good.
Yes, that's the real issue and many YouTubers are facing the ban too.
Lol I think they are continually testing the limits to see what people can accept as erosion of rights and what they can’t. It gets more pervasive each day, week, month that people allow them to do so.
Hehe, a social engineering barometer to see what ppl will or won't tolerate :P
I heard about this the other day.
This is messed up but I take issue with the idea that we need to be protected from any speech more than this incident. There are a lot of assholes in this world and they will say hateful things but their words can only harm us if we allow them to.
We should be teaching people to grow a thicker skin, I think.
Hate and harassment towards others is one thing, but speaking about controversial topics isn't something that shouldn't be restricted.
Now we just need to post the complete writings of the founding fathers, page by page, to see just how tyrannical and anti-American Fakebook really is. If it ever gets around to censoring...
...we'll know exactly whose butts they are trying to save. The patriots', of course. /s
Yes, they care about real patriots :P
Can not we deny lies and hate speech very often we meet lately especially in social media. Many of them are so convincing that many end up spreading them and maybe some of them are people we know. Impact, many people are affected and believe in the lie information because they consider the information to be true only because the information is viral.
Of course this is very unfortunate, where we always need the same name information but on the other hand we are in jejali with the many news lies and speech hatred that we receive almost every day. Here we must be smart in absorbing information Bro, Lo should select which information is useful and which is not because if engga Lo can be consumed the information.
We can not stem the flow of information that continues to flow every second. Here what is needed is the diligence of Lo in sorting out which information is good and which is not. If for example, take Lo and take Lo to others, but if it turns out the information is ugly then let the information stop at Lo, at least the information is not spread further.
Spread the false news that will not ngasi any benefit to us even that there will only ngerugiin Lo and others of course. Imagine aja, a false story or false information can make people become noisy and hostile, a person's good name can be polluted, and someone's life can be destroyed by someone's slander. Not infrequently this leads to worse Bro and it's already a lot of examples.
I'm confused.
This is hate speech isn't it?
Not that I agree it should be censored, but if you put the word 'savages' after any race of people, then that is the definition of racism. As the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it, racism is:
"...a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities."
In the case of this document, the alleged trait is being 'savages' and the race that is said to universally possess this trait is the [American] 'Indian'.
If a modern document said "Japanese savages" or "Israeli savages" or "African American savages" or "Irish savages", would it not also be hate speech?
Aside from that, the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence contributed to the genocide of as many as 100 million 'Indian savages' in America.
Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews. I wonder if we would so gladly embrace the phrase "Jewish savages" in the current Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany?
Facebook should not be censoring content. But I think it would be hard to argue that it has not correctly identified hate speech here.
Are people still using Fakebook and reading mainstream media...?
Um, yes :P