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Facebook’s Moderation Algorithm Banned Users for Historical Evidence of Slavery

Facebook’s automated content moderation was acknowledged by a company spokesperson to have erroneously censored and banned Australian users from posting an article containing a 1890s photo of Aboriginal men in chains over nudity as historical evidence of slavery in Australia.

Date it happened
2020-06-11
Organisation involved
Facebook
Where this came from
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Attribution

This incident was imported from AI Incident Database and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.