Thank Goodness For Censors

The Biden administration has enlisted Facebook to police conversations among Americans. This is because the rest of us are too dumb to be trusted, and may fall for “misinformation.” So how does Facebook carry out its mission of uplifting our discourse? By censoring conversation about hoes in gardening groups:

A group called WNY Gardeners has been repeatedly flagged by the social network for “violating community standards,” when its more than 7,500 members discussed the long-handled bladed implement, which is spelled with an “e,” unlike the offensive term.

When one member commented “Push pull hoe!” on a post about preferred weeding tools, Facebook sent a notification that read, “We reviewed this comment and found it goes against our standards for harassment and bullying,” a moderator said.

Bryan Preston comments:

This is funny and would be a lot funnier if the Biden White House hadn’t deputized Facebook to chase you and me around on its platform if we post something the regime doesn’t like. But it has.

Dumb White House plus dumb censors = a major problem.

Facebook doesn’t like it when gardeners talk about how to deal with Japanese beetles, either:

The extra set of eyes did not prevent a subsequent post in the group from being automatically disabled because of “possible violence, incitement, or hate in multiple comments,” Licata said.

“Kill them all. Drown them in soapy water,” and “Japanese beetles are jerks,” were some comments Facebook deemed offensive, according to the moderator.

Japanese beetles are indeed a pest, and my wife pursues them with Caddyshack-like single-mindedness. She has drowned many in soapy water. But I suppose the problem here is the name. Just as we can no longer have the “Indian variant,” we can’t have garden pests named after their place of origin. That appears to be Facebook’s view, anyway.

The Biden administration is dumb and Facebook is dumb, so in that sense they are made for each other. But the rest of us shouldn’t stand for it.

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