This city’s name became too much for Facebook – Dagsavisen

The city in northeastern France with around 5,000 inhabitants has received an apology from Facebook after their Facebook page was closed, writes The Guardian under the apt title Life’s a Bitche.

Bitche seems to have been hit by Facebook’s algorithms, which have interpreted the city’s name as offensive. The site was closed last month, without notice. After the news spread, Facebook on Tuesday made sure to restore the page City of Bitche.

– Strange that Facebook took so long

Bitche’s mayor, Benoît Kieffer, writes in a post – reproduced in The Guardian:

– The name of our city seems to be affected by poor interpretation. The strangest thing is that it took Facebook so long to rectify this. The president of Facebook France has just contacted me personally to tell me that the Ville de Bitche page will be republished, and he apologizes for the inconvenience that has occurred, Kieffer wrote shortly before the page was up again.

– What has happened to the city of Bitche shows how inadequate and limited modern tools can be, says the mayor, according to the BBC.

The case continues during the video

Facebook informs The Guardian that the page was taken down due to a system error.

Valérie Degouy, spokesperson for Bitche, tells the local radio station Radio Melody that the city’s name already in 2016 created problems when she tried to create an official Facebook page for the city.

– It was impossible to enter the word Bitche. I had to create a page I called Ville fortifiée, and change the description afterwards to explain that this was the official site of the city of Bitche, and at the same time point out that the username was Ville de Bitche. At that time it was allowed, she says.

Invites Zuckerberg

After Facebook restored the page, the city’s mayor said he would like to invite Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to “our wonderful city that has excelled several times throughout history.”

– Together we can honor the memory of our countrymen and our American friends from the infantry division in South Carolina, who came to liberate our city: Liberators who proudly called themselves “sons of Bitche”.

Rohrbach-lès-Bitche, a town in the same region, on Monday changed the name of the town’s official Facebook page to Ville de Rohrbach, reports BBC.

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