Tag: hate speech

Facebook, the ADL and the Brewing Battle to Label Zionism as Hate Speech

Zionism is one word, in particular, that evokes intense and passionate debate as all ideologies do. But, now the term is coming under scrutiny after an “innocuous” email shed light on Facebook’s response to concerted action by a powerful Jewish rights group that led to new community guidelines curbing so-called “hate speech.”

The leaked email brought attention to a discussion ostensibly taking place inside the multi-billion-dollar company to design its censorship algorithms and moderator criteria according to the wishes of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); posing the question of whether moderators should interpret the word as a slur against Jewish people, in general, or just Israelis.

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Media Hypocrisy on Full Display as WH Press Secretary Escapes Scrutiny for Slur That Would Kill a Republican’s Career

For most conservatives, Psaki calling Yates as an “American hero” would be bad enough.

Yates is the former acting attorney general who endeared herself to liberals by getting fired by then-President Trump in January of 2017 over her theatrical refusal to enforce Trump’s ban on travelers from countries linked to international terrorism.

But Psaki also took the occasion to use the hashtag “#LadyG,” which is apparently snide liberal shorthand for rumors that the South Carolina conservative is secretly gay. (It comes from a June 2020 “Perspective” piece published by The Washington Post.)

For the record, Graham has denied it. “To the extent it matters, I’m not gay,” he told a TMZ interviewer in 2018.

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University Claims Words ‘Picnic,’ ‘Brown Bag’ Are Offensive

The University of Michigan has a “Words Matter Task Force.”

Seriously. Maybe that’s why out-of-state tuition costs more than $66,000 a year.

The WMTF, set up by the school’s Information and Technology Services (ITS) department, has declared that it finds more than two dozen words and phrases possibly offensive to people, including “picnic,” “brown bag” and “blacklist.”

“To effectively communicate with customers, it is important for ITS to evaluate the terms and language conventions that may hinder effective communication, harm morale, and deliberately or inadvertently exclude people from feeling accepted to foment a healthy and inclusive culture,” the task force said in a memo.

The WMTF offers alternative words to use, for instance urging people to say “gathering” instead of “picnic” and “lunch and learn” instead of “brown bag.”

“The word ‘picnic’ appears to be banned because of false suggestions on the internet that it originates from the racist, extrajudicial killings of African Americans,” the Daily Mail reported. “The word picnic actually comes from the 17th century French word ‘pique-nique,’ a term used to describe a social gathering in which attendees each contributed with a portion of food.”

In July, the Reuters News Agency published a piece headlined: “Fact check: The word picnic does not originate from racist lynchings.”

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Facebook Censorship Algos Go Haywire, Blocking Ads From Struggling Legitimate Businesses As “Hate Speech”

In what is definitely some type of Karmic payback for social media companies now appending some type of label to what seems like every other post nowadays, Facebook just found out that its super-duper censoring algorithm also banned advertisements from some struggling businesses, mistaking them as hate speech.

We love it when a plan comes together.

One woman, Ruth Harrigan, who advertises on Facebook to sell her honey and beeswax-based products, told Bloomberg she thought she missed out on an estimated $5,000 in revenue after Facebook mistakenly banned her ads right before black Friday.

She said: “I was getting a little anxious thinking, ‘Oh my God, Black Friday is around the corner, most of my sales for the year happen in November and December and that’s it,’. I said, ‘If I’m shut down any longer than this, it’ll cripple me.’”

The company’s “misfiring content-moderation software” was to blame – and it happened in the middle of a pandemic when sellers are more reliant on Facebook and social media advertising to drive business. In fact, Facebook has been censoring so much content this year, it has relied heavily on software to do the job, since they don’t have enough human moderators. 

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