Big Tech's censor machines keep malfunctioning

 Matt Tabbi:

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Since the beginning of the “content moderation” movement, a major problem has become apparent. Human beings simply create too much content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for other human beings to review. Machines have proven able to identify clearly inappropriate content like child pornography (though even there the algorithms occasionally stumbled, as in the case of Facebook’s removal of the famous “Running Girl” photo).

But asking computer programs to sort out the subtleties of different types of speech — differences between commentary and advocacy, criticism and incitement, reporting and participation — has proven a disaster. A theme running through nearly all of the “Meet the Censored” articles is this problem of algorithmic censorship systematically throwing out babies with bathwater.

Whether it’s YouTube cracking down on videographer Ford Fischer for covering events involving Holocaust deniers or white supremacists, the same platform zapping footage of the January 6th riots shot by Jon Farina of Status Coup, or Matt Orfalea being punished for violating a “criminal organizations policy” for a spoof coffee commercial involving a mass-murderer, Internet carriers have consistently shown they cannot or will not distinguish between, say, being a Nazi and criticizing one, joking about one, even warning about one.

The frightening thing about the 100YearsAgoLive incident is that it’s not hard to see this becoming a trend, where history itself is deemed to violate common decency. The whole idea of historical education is to prevent future horrors via graphic warnings from the past. Survivors of the Holocaust have always been adamant that we must “Never Forget,” that places such as Auschwitz must never be buried or hidden away but instead displayed prominently, made into lasting cultural artifacts whose purpose is to be so conspicuous as to prevent the natural human impulse to whitewash our sadly expansive history of evil.

In the name of combating hate speech, violence, conspiracy theory, etc., Internet platforms are removing not just advocacy, but knowledge, in a wide-ranging effort that may help the companies create a more frictionless, commercially successful product, but will impede the past from chastening the present. If the aim is preventing the spread of hateful ideas, nothing could be more counter-productive that cleaning away the record of their real-world impact.
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The 100YearsAgoLive episode was a description of Hitler's rise to power in Germany.  It was pretty straightforward and not an attempt to glorify his rise.  I think Facebook and others are also screwing up in their attempt to regulate content, and even their so-called "fact-checkers" make similar mistakes.