As Jacinda jets off to Paris to meet up with her besties, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, with plans to control the internet and stop videos and posts that promote ‘hate’, it seems that Facebook is way ahead of her. Mark Zuckerberg is not attending her meeting because he has no need to. Facebook is deleting hate speech all over its platforms very efficiently.
It doesn’t delete posts from Islamic terrorist organisations, and it doesn’t delete posts from any left-wing activist movements. However, it has deleted a post which shows a lot of hate… it deleted the Declaration of Independence in the US in a series of posts meant to commemorate 4th July celebrations.
quote.At first glance, the Vindicator’s Facebook promotion did not seem designed to make waves.
The small newspaper, based out of Liberty, a Texas town of 9,175 outside of Houston, planned to post the Declaration of Independence on Facebook in 12 daily installments leading up to the Fourth of July — 242 years since the document was adopted at the Second Continental Congress in 1776.
But on the 10th day, the Vindicator’s latest installment was removed by Facebook. The company told the newspaper that the particular passage, which included the phrase “merciless Indian Savages,” went against its “standards on hate speech,” the newspaper wrote.
It is another glaring example of how the mechanisms that tech companies use to regulate user content — many of which involve algorithms and other automated processes — can result in embarrassing errors. Facebook uses a mix of human work and technological efforts to moderate its content.
The washington post. end quote.
This demonstrates admirably that all Jacinda is doing is raising her international profile by virtue signalling, but it will achieve absolutely nothing. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are simply too large, with far too many postings to be able to effectively monitor everything that is posted.
At the moment, Facebook is busy deleting lots of innocent posts because they do not comply with their policies regarding sexual content, but it is often weeks before supposedly offensive posts are deleted. Many of them are not particularly offensive anyway.
Jacinda claims she ‘inadvertently’ saw the Christchurch shooters video. She is not being truthful here. Many people, including myself, went looking for it before it was taken down. It is impossible to ‘inadvertently’ view an 18 minute video on Facebook. You would have to be ‘friends’ with the perpetrator to do that.
No one watched that video ‘inadvertently’.
But hey… Jacinda is still pushing hard for that UN post, and jetting off to Paris and meeting with Macron is a great way to do that. It will achieve nothing, but pretty much everything the UN does achieves nothing, so that fits with its agenda just fine.
There will be lots of photo opportunities, lots of videos of Jacinda looking serious and lots more articles in the international media proclaiming her as the world’s greatest leader. She just laps it up.
In the meantime, just remember… Facebook is so good at eliminating hate speech that it deleted its country’s own Declaration of Independence… well there you go. Just how hateful can you get?
