Facebook’s algorithm for eliminating hate speech from its website wound up backfiring on Tuesday, as the social network juggernaut inadvertently mistook a portion of the Declaration of Independence as a form of hate speech, CNN reports.
The Vindicator, a small newspaper based outside of Houston, Texas, was posting excerpts from the Declaration in the days leading up to July 4th. However when the paper posted paragraphs 27-31, their post was deleted and they were sent a notification from the website stating they had deleted it because it contained hate speech.
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The paper’s managing editor, Casey Stinnett, speculated the line “the merciless Indian Savages” was what set off the automated program.
“While The Vindicator cannot be certain exactly what triggered Facebook‘s filtering program, the editor suspects it was most likely the phrase ‘Indian Savages,’” he wrote. “Perhaps had Thomas Jefferson written it as ‘Native Americans at a challenging stage of cultural development’ that would have been better. Unfortunately, Jefferson, like most British colonists of his day, did not hold an entirely friendly view of Native Americans.”
After realizing the mistake, Facebook undid their action and restored the post.
“It looks like we made a mistake and removed something you posted on Facebook that didn’t go against our Community Standards,” the company wrote in a statement to The Vindicator staff. “We want to apologize and let you know that we’ve restored your content and removed any blocks on your account related to this incorrect action.”
A spokesperson at Facebook said in an interview with CNN that the passage was not recognized by their program as lines from the famous document.
“The post was removed by mistake and restored as soon as we looked into it,” they explained. “We process millions of reports each week, and sometimes we get things wrong.”
Stinnett updated the original story about the post’s deletion, thanking Facebook for fixing the problem.
“The Vindicator extends its thanks to Facebook,” he wrote. “We never doubted Facebook would fix it, but neither did we doubt the usefulness of our fussing about it a little.”
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained back in January that the site is changing up its algorithms to prioritize posts from friends and family over news stories.
“We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us,” he wrote in a statement at the time. “That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness. But recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
