Facebook "Mistakenly" Censors Conservative Education Company For "Hate Speech Violations"

[Swordsmyth]

Facebook says it "mistakenly" removed several videos and censored the reach of conservative educational organization PragerU, short for Prager University.
On Friday, Prager tweeted evidence that they were being "heavily censored" by Facebook - writing "Our last 9 posts are reaching 0 of our 3 million followers. At least two videos were deleted last night for “hate speech” including our recent video with @conservmillen.

BREAKING: We're being heavily censored on @Facebook.

Our last 9 posts are reaching 0 of our 3 million followers. At least two videos were deleted last night for “hate speech” including our recent video with @conservmillen.

SHARE to spread awareness about big tech censorship! pic.twitter.com/k83HqmlMRc
— PragerU (@prageru) August 17, 2018

For reference, here's one video deemed too "hateful" for Facebook - which suggests that when society tries to force men to feminize in order to eliminate "toxic masculinity," it only creates a more toxic environment vs. encouraging men to harness their inherent masculinity for the sake of good.

Ladies and gentlemen, the video deemed too "hateful" for @facebook.@conservmillen
👉https://t.co/rsogdgmdJ2 pic.twitter.com/kV6kfynqDm
— PragerU (@prageru) August 17, 2018

Facebook responded 8 hours afte Prager University's original tweet with an apology, writing in a tweet: "We mistakenly removed these videos and have restored them because they don't break our standards. This will reverse any reduction in content distribution you’ve experienced. We’re very sorry and are continuing to look into what happened with your Page."

We mistakenly removed these videos and have restored them because they don't break our standards. This will reverse any reduction in content distribution you’ve experienced. We’re very sorry and are continuing to look into what happened with your Page.
— Facebook (@facebook) August 18, 2018

PragerU produces short educational videos on a wide varierty of topics from a conservative perspective. While not typically covering current events, Prager provides counterpoints to many liberal talking points - including oppression of women, climate change, gun ownership and trust in the media. In 2017, Google restricted of demonitized 37 PragerU videos, which the university challenged in a lawsuit that was later dismissed by a district court judge.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ech-violations

[Aratus]

way to go PragerU

[Brian4Liberty]

Another “mistake”.

[Swordsmyth]

What Happened
Founded by radio talker Dennis Prager, PragerU found that Facebook’s censors cracked down on nine of the “university’s” video lessons.
According to PragerU, “Internal Facebook analytics reveal that as of Thursday, Aug. 16, at 10:00 PM PDT, posts by PragerU on the social media platform have been completely invisible to its more than 3 million followers.” At the time, PragerU’s Will Witt wrote, “our last 9 posts have been completely censored reaching 0 of our 3 million followers. At least two of our video posts were deleted last night for ‘hate speech’ including a post of our recent video with The Conservative Millennial, Make Men Masculine Again.”
The Facebook attack came “just days after discovering that 47 additional PragerU videos have been restricted by YouTube. This brings the total number of PragerU videos restricted on YouTube to 88, or more than 10 percent of educational nonprofit’s entire online media library.”
Facebook apologized after Witt’s complaint, saying “we mistakenly removed these videos and have restored them because they don't break our standards. This will reverse any reduction in content distribution you’ve experienced. We’re very sorry and are continuing to look into what happened with your Page.”


Ideological Censorship
But PragerU finally got the truth: Ideological censors were trying to shut down Prager.
As Breitbart reported, Facebook confessed that the videos were removed because “a large number of users flagged the PragerU posts as inappropriate. The videos were then sent to a content review team where one of the employees reviewed them and decided to remove the videos as ‘hate speech.’ Facebook told PragerU that the employee behind the removal of the videos and limiting of its Facebook page will be re-trained to better understand Facebook’s guidelines.”
With all the complaints from conservatives about social media censorship of their views, you’d think the retraining might have already been done. One idea might be something like the “diversity” or “sensitivity” training corporate America forces upon employees after someone offends an officially designated victim, which in turn causes a moral panic discussed ad nauseum on the front page of The New York Times.
Anyway, Facebook denied that the Southern Poverty Law Center, the discredited group that smears anyone with whom it disagrees, was behind the censorship. But Facebook’s denial was somewhat interesting, at least as Breitbart described it:
Facebook replied that the SPLC does not write their hate speech policy but they send content that they think is hateful and Facebook review team reviews that. Facebook said that the SPLC is no different than any other group and that anyone can suggest hateful content. Facebook was adamant that the SPLC had nothing to do with the issues that PragerU faced.
But how would Facebook know that individual SPLC employees — or readers of SPLC’s defamatory claims at its website — weren’t among the users who attacked PragerU?

More at: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/...cal-censorship

[timosman]

Another “mistake”.

Employees know they will not be removed for overzealous flagging so they flag away. The AI is obviously not ready yet. Armies of reviewers making minimum wage follow all large tech investments. Soon in a city near you big tech will be creating thousands of minimum wage jobs.