Does Facebook have a war on history? Can history violate community standards? Forbes Journalist Peter Suciu

The Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Does Facebook have a war on history? The answer is a simple no but the story is complicated.

In this episode I am joined by author and reporter Peter Suciu on his article '"On Facebook, History Can Violate Community Standards."

To quote the article * One thing that is often taught to students of history is that "history" didn't happen. Events happened in the past, but history is just our way of chronicling those events. There is also a saying that history is written by the winners, but that too isn't entirely accurate – if history were only written by the winners we'd never hear of the setbacks, mistakes made by generals or losses incurred by said winners. History, to put it bluntly, is written by historians and those with knowledge of past events.

On Facebook it now seems that merely writing about – and then sharing those writings – could violate community standards. Even in this era of "fake news" it isn't so easy to understand why the social network has taken this stance - end quote.

Recently an incident on Facebook lead me to create this video.... while scrolling through my Roman themed history groups I noticed a post by a member showing that their history post had been taken down by Facebook for violating community standards. The post was a picture of the Roman Eagle with SPQR under its feet. This particular illustration was actually from the Rome Total War Gaming Franchise and that lead me to wonder more about how and why Facebook targets certain posts?

Is there confusion among Facebook employees and its algorithms involving not just Ancient History but specifically Roman History?

Why are Third Reich posts and photos censored? And why are they censored even if there are no violent images or symbols of hate shown?

Why are militaria groups coming under fire for trading, buying and selling Third Reich memorabilia when other memorabilia such as relating to the USSR or the CCP are deemed acceptable?

Why is Facebook warning me that the history groups I'm in may be exposing me to extremist content?

These are questions that I pondered while making this episode and so I hosted a fellow history buff and militaria collector on whether or not history can violate Facebooks Community Standards?

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On Facebook, History Can Violate Community Standards

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