This is just insane:
A newspaper serially publishing the Declaration of Independence on social media this week got an unexpected surprise: Facebook had blocked one of the posts.
The Liberty County Vindicator, a newspaper in southeastern Texas, had been posting portions of the Declaration on Facebook each day leading up to the Fourth of July. But the tenth installment of the foundational document didn’t post — and Facebook said it was because of hate speech.
“Somewhere in paragraphs 27-31 of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote something that Facebook finds offensive,” Casey Stinnett, managing editor of the Vindicator, said on the paper’s website Monday. “The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post ‘goes against our standards on hate speech.'”
Stinnett speculated that the phrase “merciless Indian savages” was what had triggered Facebook’s response.
“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,” the Declaration’s text reads.
This says a lot about where we are as a society.