It's either intentional, which would be puzzling and unsettling, or it's a bug which has gone unnoticed. In any case it is proof that big tech is in no shape to take on the responsibility for moderating discourse on the internet. This reminds me of the bug that falls into a typewriter in the beginning of the movie "Brazil" which causes a spelling error and the arrest and execution of a random innocent person. Granted, this type of automated banning without any ability to involve a real human is not costing any lives (yet), but I am increasingly worried about how big tech is becoming a Kafkaesque lawnmower. One thing is to deliberately censor speech that you do not like, another is to design a system where innocent and important speech is silently censored and noone in charge even notices.
> It's either intentional, which would be puzzling and unsettling, or it's a bug which has gone unnoticed.
I've long believed that a large part of technological evil comes from bugs which were introduced innocuously, but intentionally not fixed.
Like, your ISP wouldn't intentionally design a system to steal your money, but they would build a low-quality billing system and then prioritise fixing systematic bugs that cause errors in the customer's favour, while leaving the ones that cause overbilling.
This could easily be the same on Facebook - this got swept up in a false positive and then someone decided it's not a good one to fix.
There's a rumor that an unnamed ISP did exactly that - overcharged a large portion of its customers due to a software bug. Then decided to not fix the issue instead relying on customers to call support and have the charge fixed.
