That librarian who told me to "let the internet auto-censor" was way off base

Back in 2019, I was trying to start a local history blog about my town's founding families, which includes some pretty rough stuff about land grabs and settler violence. Our head librarian at the branch near Elm Street said I should just use social media platforms with built-in filters and let them handle the moderation. I figured she knew her stuff, so I put everything on a free WordPress site. Man, was that a mistake. Within three months, my post about the 1850s treaty violations got flagged and removed by their automated system for "hateful content" even though it was just historical records. I spent five weeks appealing with zero results. Now I self-host on a small server and manually approve everything. Has anyone else had a well-intentioned authority figure hand you censorship advice that backfired like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_moore3919d ago

The automated systems are definitely strict but the problem here is more about how you presented the content than the platform itself. If your posts were clearly labeled as historical documentation with context the filters probably wouldn't have flagged them.

ericschmidt19d ago

75% of the time the automated systems catch stuff that nobody would even complain about. Honestly, people act like getting flagged is some huge deal when you can just reupload with a better description. Ngl, the filters are annoying but not usually worth getting bent out of shape over.