Facebook’s algorithm flagged an 81-year-old grandmother’s comments about knitted pigs as an example of “hate speech” and threatened her with a permanent ban.
Yes, really.
After losing her husband last year, Rita Rich-Mulcahy, a retired teacher who lives in Australia, created the Facebook page to share with the world her love of knitting and raise money for The Smith Family charity, which helps disadvantaged children.
After posting a picture of her own knitted pigs, Rich-Mulcahy referred to them as “white pigs” and “high-viz pigs,” resulting in the threat to terminate her account over “hate speech”.
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“It may seem a small thing to most people, but to someone who had never even had an overdue library book, being charged with using hate speech was frightening,” said Rich-Mulcahy.
Facebook issued a statement asserting that its automated system flagging the comments was a “mistake” that its AI “sometimes” makes.
The story once again illustrates how Facebook’s censorship algorithm, which gets stricter almost by the day as a result of relentless mainstream media hysteria, is completely broken.
Read more: Summit
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