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Facebook Banned St. Augustine as Hate Speech
Domenico Bettinelli July 14th, 2019 · 49 Comments ·Catholic social media, Internet, Media
Does that seem dramatic? But it’s the truth. Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. And it’s not some fire and brimstone “Sinners are going to hell!” quote, but in fact, quite the opposite.
Earlier this week, I saw my friend, Fr. Matt Wescott, post the quote from St. Augustine on his wall. It’s a quote from a homily by St. Augustine of Hippo, a sermon that is contained in the official liturgical books of the Catholic Church because it is part of the Office of Readings for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time in the Liturgy of the Hours (the Divine Office).
Here is the quote:
“Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon. But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others.”
As Fr. Matt said to me, he never received an explanation from Facebook, but that he’s “virtually certain it’s still the algorithm” taking it down because, as he says, the quote itself is challenging but inoffensive.
Then our friend, Fr. Chip Hines, posted it on his wall because he thought Facebook was being ridiculous and wanted to see if the same thing happened and it did. He has requested human review of the takedown and is still waiting.
So being the kind of guy who knows a bit about these things and curious about why it was happening I posted it too. Some friends saw my post and re-shared it. Then this happened.
Hate speech? It’s the opposite of hate speech. It’s calling for people to stop focusing on others’ sins and concentrate on their own. Augustine is just re-formulating Jesus’ own words from the Gospel: “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3) So I took the option they give of asking to have the takedown reviewed by a human being. As I write this, I’m still waiting. But in the meantime I posted that screenshot above, which began to receive notice. Eventually it was shared over 600 times and I know even more people were reposting the quote fresh.
Then this happened.
This is getting really ridiculous. If I keep at it, it will be a mastrushka of bans. Actually, no it won’t because Facebook warned me that if I get another takedown, I will have my account suspended. This would be a problem for me because I would not be able to manage my Facebook pages for work and so I’m keeping my powder dry. I did post this last screen capture on Twitter and have mentioned the takedown on Facebook without including the quote.
Violating Community Standards
Some friends who have posted the quote themselves have said they have theirs taken down, while others have not. Part of the problem here is that this takedown notice leaves me with no understanding of how I violated their policy. When I click that “continue” button, it tells me that:
We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.
If you read Facebook’s own descriptions of what it considers hate speech, you will see they divide it into three tiers of the kinds of hate speech. You can read them for yourself, but I’m still struggling to understand why this quote from St. Augustine is defined as hate speech, when I see much, much worse kinds of speech every day on Facebook. Heck, I see stuff that isn’t all that bad that is worse than the Augustine quote.
Arbitrary and Capricious
This makes it the worst kind of rule: Where you don’t know where the line is. At this point, I don’t even know what kind of post will land me a suspension because there’s no clear indicator of why this quote is a violation, but others aren’t. It’s completely arbitrary and capricious.
Imagine a law that was passed that had the same arbitrary vagueness. Let’s say, the law said, “If you drive too fast you’ll get a ticket,” but it doesn’t say what “too fast” means. Maybe for one policeman it’s 30 mph and another it’s 50 for the same stretch of road. It’s madness.
Even if this was just one person with a grudge against Christians and not a badly programmed algorithm, it’s still a stultifying suppression of free speech in what has become a public square run by a private company. When you can’t be certain whether your ability to say things that would be constitutionally protected on a public street will get you banned from the platform that a supermajority of people in the United States use as their platform of daily free expression, it doesn’t bode well for where we are going.
As a conservative, I’m biased against government intervention into free enterprise. But I also recognize that sometimes regulation and legislation are necessary to protect the rights of citizens against the agendas of certain groups of people or corporations. I’m starting to lean toward the necessity of the US government regulating social media firms as public utilities. Because Big Brother isn’t just from the government any more.
Update: Facebook’s human review has been completed, and no surprise, they have rejected my appeal. They did invite me to respond to their rejection and this is what I wrote:
I still don’t understand why this is hate speech. It’s a quote from a Catholic saint who expresses the opposite of hate speech. He is essentially restating the words of Jesus Christ in the Gospels to stop worrying about what the other guy is or isn’t doing and worry about your own flaws. Is Facebook saying that the Gospel is hate speech? But what’s worse is that I have no more understanding now of what is a violation of your community standards than I did before. I cannot for the life of me figure out why you label this hate speech.
So now Facebook users can enjoy the feeling of wondering if this seemingly innocuous quote from the Bible or that word of encouragement from a saint will land you in Facebook jail. Because they’re certainly not telling us.
Update 2: Sorry for the delayed update, folks, but we were away on vacation this past week (great timing!) and I was unable to get decent internet access to edit this post. Anyway, Facebook did eventually reverse its decision and I got a form email informing me of that. I noticed that others who’d had their posts removed also had them restored. As I said several times, I’m still left with the same conclusion, which is that Facebook’s standards are too arbitrary and their process too opaque for any user to have any confidence that any particular post of theirs will be judged unacceptable for some reason. Facebook has to fix that.
I would encourage you to check out the episode of the podcast Raising the Betts, in which I discuss the matter up to Sunday, July 14, and then listen to the upcoming July 25 episode of Secrets of Technology, in which I will do a more complete followup.
Domenico Bettinelli
Domenico Bettinelli, Jr., is a father of five and husband, a Roman Catholic, born in Boston, educated at Franciscan University of Steubenville, who has worked in Catholic media--print, broadcast, and online--since the mid-90s. Find out all about Dom on his About Me page. He is also the CEO of the StarQuest Production Network at sqpn.com. All opinions on this site are solely those of Domenico Bettinelli and do not reflect the opinions of anyone else. See the disclaimer for further details.
49 Comments
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Elizabeth Lee Collins
July 14th, 2019
I am sharing this I cant belive this happened but not surprisded they have been blocking my catholic scripture and saints quotes for a long time now..
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John Askey
July 14th, 2019
Not sure if I missed it, but FB, Twitter and most social media platforms are technically “private” businesses and so they do not have to abide by the same guidelines for free speech as is described in the US Constitution. Essentially, they feel they have a right to “not play fair” with our posts. The problem is, they are unfortunately inequitable in their treatment of speech, usually against conservative political, moral, or religious thoughts. Until they’re declared a “public utility” (which is somewhat unlikely but could happen) they can pretty much do what they want, and be inconsistent and biased, and not acknowledge the unfair treatment.
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Domenico Bettinelli
July 14th, 2019
I address this point at the bottom of my post.
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The Rev'd R E LANGFORD JR
July 14th, 2019
Congratulations! You tell the truth, Sir. It is a shame that FaceBook does not know the truth from it’s opposite. The truth cannot be “hate speech,” indeed it is the opposite of anything so silly and degraded. For shame on FaceBook!
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Sakari Meinilä
July 17th, 2019
Could it be that the stuoid machine reads this a violation of men’s rights (compared to wemen): ”…men are hopeless creatures…” -?
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Todd Flowerday
July 14th, 2019
Mine has been up for ten minutes; already have a comment and a heart. So, we’ll see how it goes.
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David Gleba
July 14th, 2019
A couple of days ago, I shared the same quote from Saint Augustine, and Facebook removed it the very next day; the same thing happened when some of my friends shared the post! Since there is clearly absolutely nothing offensive in Saint Augustine’s words, I am forced to draw the conclusion that anti-Catholic bias is at the root of this. We all know that if the selfsame words had been attributed to Ghandi, Mohammed, or the Buddha, Facebook would have had no objection to them whatsoever.
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Kelly Thatcher
July 14th, 2019
“As a conservative, I’m biased against government intervention into free enterprise. But I also recognize that sometimes regulation and legislation are necessary to protect the rights of citizens against the agendas of certain groups of people or corporations. I’m starting to lean toward the necessity of the US government regulating social media firms as public utilities. Because Big Brother isn’t just from the government any more.”
Love you, Dom o’ mine, but hope you reconsider. Folks, keep reposting and reposting and reposting. Big Brother certainly IS from the government, but is fed and thrives by those who pretend to be “free speech advocates,” ironically enough…and is, in turn, refed from the regurgitated slope the government hands out. (MSM, I’m looking at you…and you, too, Amazon, and others!) Like you, FB has a role to play in the earning of my daily bread. But there are other avenues. (Please don’t ask me what these are, on accounta I don’t know yet.) 🙂
Anyway, I hope you reconsider the U.S. Government regulating social media as an answer. Thanks for reading. XOXO
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David Gleba
July 14th, 2019
Today, a friend of mine posted the same quote, but omitted Saint Augustine’s name, attributing it merely to “a saint”; it has been up for 4 hours so far…
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David Gleba
July 15th, 2019
As of now, my friend’s post (omitting Saint Augustine’s name) has remained up for 13 hours.
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Todd Flowerday
July 14th, 2019
I’ve been quoting saints on fb for years, both in a private capacity and as a contributor to church sites. Never had a problem. I use names. I get unfriended by the occasional conservative, but that’s not news. I still think Dom has a stalker.
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Domenico Bettinelli
July 14th, 2019
Todd, I have now repeated myself many times. The quote was originally banned after it was posted by two different priests long before I posted it. I wrote this to you before and I wrote it up above. And now I have received a further message from Facebook that after human review by one of their community standards people that it is still considered hate speech. That’s not some stalker following me around (and if I had a malicious stalker why just this one (according to your theory) random post and not other stuff?
The problem here, as I wrote above, isn’t just that this particular quote was removed but that the way Facebook’s system is set up is completely arbitrary and capricious. You have no way of knowing what particular, seemingly innocuous, post will trigger the ban and put you in Facebook limbo or get you banned completely.
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Todd Flowerday
July 15th, 2019
I used to think the conservative half of the Catholic blogosphere was arbitrary and capricious. But whatever. I don’t relish seeing what’s coming around in your and these clerics’ direction. But for what it’s worth, I’m with you on this one. If it’s not a stalker, it must be the company you keep. Don’t friend me on fb for awhile and let’s see if they let my Augustinian quote stay afloat.
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Gayle Hornbacher
July 19th, 2019
Did they let you keep your quote?
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Philip Neale
July 16th, 2019
Our society approves of behaviors plainly condemned in the bible. The ancient writings will eventually be deemed hate speech by those groups. It is only a matter of time. I am not looking forward to this eventuality.
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Gregory Graham
July 14th, 2019
The quote is “hate speech” because it might make people who think they are good feel bad. Anything that does not affirm every life choice and action a person makes is hurtful and considered hateful unless it is condemning racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, eco-crimes or any other sin against progressivism. Therefore, the most charitable and loving speech regarding the Christian doctrine of the sinful condition of man will likely run afoul of the hate speech police.
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David Gleba
July 14th, 2019
You hit the nail right on the head! (Is that “hate speech”?)
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Jay Ballentine
July 14th, 2019
“But men are hopeless creatures.” Maybe this is sexist. Maybe you should have criticized the whole human race and not just the male sex by saying “But humans are hopeless creatures.”
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Lisa Deeley Smith
July 14th, 2019
I think it’s the “men are hopeless creatures” phrase that’s tripping the wire, with men being a protected class. I wonder if there is another translation that uses, say, humanity, and if that would pass.
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Gail Angela Karrer
July 15th, 2019
SUE THEM, BY GOD!
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Sandy
July 15th, 2019
I, too, am a Christian conservative who is concerned about government overreach. That this quote from St Augustine keeps getting flagged is baffling to me. I’ve read it and heard it many times in my life and in my education. Today is the first time that this part of it ever jumped off the page at me and I’m thinking this could be what is violating Facebook’s standards of hate speech: “…men are hopeless creatures…” While we know that “men” here is speaking of humanity, it could be seen as attacking the male gender. Maybe get a test team together to repost this putting the word “humans” in parentheses in place of men and see if your test group gets the same result, percentage-wise, as the original quote. I’m very curious about this whole thing. The day Christians can be so easily silenced is the day we should all be shaking in our shoes. God Bless!
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Mike Flowers
July 16th, 2019
Yea it could be the “men are hopeless..” line. That could trigger an algorithm to think it’s a gender-related, hateful message.
Who knows how much attention the “human reviewer” pays… the guy is probably sitting there with thousands of posts to review, just sees that this quote has been taken down alot, imediately clicks “deny” and hurries through the rest of the posts so they can go to lunch.
“Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity (but don’t rule out malice)”
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Bob
July 15th, 2019
The progressives philosophy is “There is no Truth, only a man’s opinion” (no absolutes/no G-d). This is the philosophy in our new Federally mandated school curriculum, “Common Core/College and Career Ready Standards”. Every State has abdicated their sovereignty over their local public schools for this ‘new’ Global workforce education system (A Type 2 system instead of our traditional Type 1 Classical knowledge-based academic system). It simply holds man’s nature above natural law. Our children have been and are being taught this and to disregard their ‘fallen’ families’ views. Germany 1930s.
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RonH
July 15th, 2019
What Freedom do you have when others dictate what you can see, can hear, or read ? Americans need to make the oppressive dictators end the nonsense now, or you’ll lose your freedoms for good.
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Facebook hat Augustinus als Hassredner eingestuft und verbannt | | TheoBlog.de
July 16th, 2019
[…] Hier die gesamte Geschichte:
https://www.bettnet.com. […]
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John
July 16th, 2019
Great article. Ironically, I shared this article on a catholic group in Facebook and it was flagged (by Facebook’s algorithm) then subsequently deleted by the administrator of the group (presumably without verifying if it were really inappropriate). It is simply ironic that a post about freedom of speech itself gets suppressed.
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July 16th, 2019
[…] cita, explicó Bettinelli en un post enérgico sobre la acusación de «discurso de odio», es de una homilía del santo incluida en […]
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Bryan
July 16th, 2019
Never expect justice from liberals.
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Philip Neale
July 16th, 2019
I bet it is the word “sin.” It would be interesting to substitute “error” or “lapse” or some other word. One man’s sin is another man’s greatest achievement on FB.
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Facebook bans quotation by St. Augustine of Hippo and calls it 'hate speech,' Catholic writer says | Patriots and Progressives
July 16th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli — director of community engagement for Massachusetts Citizens for Life — wrote that the quotation is from a St. Augustine sermon “contained in the official liturgical books […]
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Facebook bans quotation by St. Augustine of Hippo and calls it 'hate speech,' Catholic writer says
July 16th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli — director of community engagement for Massachusetts Citizens for Life — wrote that the quotation is from a St. Augustine sermon “contained in the official liturgical books […]
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Facebook Bans St. Augustine Quote as 'Hate Speech'
July 16th, 2019
[…] Citizens for Life claims that Facebook has labeled a quote by St. Augustine as hate speech. In a blog post, Domenico Bettinelli wrote, "Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time […]
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Facebook Bans St. Augustine Quote as 'Hate Speech' | Patriots and Progressives
July 16th, 2019
[…] Citizens for Life claims that Facebook has labeled a quote by St. Augustine as hate speech. In a blog post, Domenico Bettinelli wrote, “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every […]
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Malcolm Smith
July 16th, 2019
I’ve just put up the quote, along with a link to your blog, and it has been up for 16 hours so far. Maybe I’m not important enough to be watched.
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Facebook bans Saint Augustine quote as ‘hate speech’ | News - wiredfocus
July 17th, 2019
[…] quote, Bettinelli explained in a spirited post on the “hate speech” accusation, is from a homily of the saint included in the Roman Catholic […]
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🤠 Wednesday News Roundup 07/17/19 🐎 | Rabblerouserruminations's Weblog
July 17th, 2019
[…] Citizens for Life claims that Facebook has labeled a quote by St. Augustine as hate speech. In a blog post, Domenico Bettinelli wrote, “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every […]
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Moonbattery Facebook Forbids Words of St Augustine - Moonbattery
July 17th, 2019
[…] be suppressed. So comprehensive are the rules that Facebook has threatened to kill the account of Domenico Bettinelli for posting a quote from St Augustine that the social media behemoth’s censors have […]
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Brian Brandt
July 17th, 2019
Mr. Bettineli,
I linked into your site from another site that picked up your story (moonbattery.com). I don’t have a Facebook account, but possibly you – or one of your regular posters if you are afraid of getting sent to Facebook Jail – could do a little experiment –
Substitute the word ‘racism’ for ‘sin,’ and attribute the quote to Martin Luther King. See if it gets banned then.
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Domenico Bettinelli
July 19th, 2019
You may have already seen elsewhere that it appears the phrase that caused all this was “men are hopeless creatures.”
Reply
Facebook stuft Augustinus als Hassredner ein | Bibelkreis München
July 17th, 2019
[…] Es ist ganz offensichtlich, dass Facebook in diesem Fall nicht vor einer Aufforderung zum Hass oder zur Gewalt schützt, sondern das Recht auf die freie Rede völlig unbegründet beschneidet. Es fällt nicht schwer, sich auszumahlen, wohin das führen kann. Hier die gesamte Geschichte:
https://www.bettnet.com.https://theoblog.de/facebook-hat-augustinus-als-hassredner-eingestuft-und-verbannt/33798/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theoblogde+%28TheoBlog.de%29 […]
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July 18th, 2019
[…] quote, Bettinelli explained in a spirited post on the “hate speech” accusation, is from a homily of the saint included in the Roman Catholic […]
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July 19th, 2019
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[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. […]
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‘Is Facebook Saying the Gospel Is Hate Speech?’ St. Augustine Quote Blocked by Social Giant – socialnetworksnews
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[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. […]
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July 19th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. […]
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July 19th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted […]
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July 19th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. […]
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July 19th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted it. […]
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'Is Facebook Saying the Gospel Is Hate Speech?' St. Augustine Quote Blocked by Social Giant | information buzzer
July 19th, 2019
[…] Bettinelli writes: “Facebook has repeatedly banned a quote from St. Augustine every time I’ve posted […]
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