Facebook Asks on Every Post: 'Is This Hate Speech?'

UPDATE: Scroll to the bottom for Facebook’s response.

On Tuesday, Facebook launched an initiative enabling users to identify “hate speech.”

On virtually every single public post, an option has emerged. “Does this post contain hate speech?” the site asks, giving two options: “Yes” or “No.” Each post also gives the option to dismiss the question with a tiny “x” box to the right of the answers.

The “hate speech” question even appears on a user’s own posts.

Facebook appears to have applied this policy to everyone’s posts, an equal opportunity “hate speech” identifying project. It shows up on PJ Media:

And on National Review:

And on HuffPost:

It showed up for the LGBT group Human Rights Campaign:

And for the Family Research Council.

Even posts not sharing articles had the “hate speech” identification option.

Then, just as suddenly as the “hate speech” identification options appeared, they disappeared on Tuesday morning.

Some did not take kindly to this option. “What the heck Facebook? Why are you asking if I’m committing hate speech?” Joshua Herring, a humanities instructor at Thales Academy and contributor for The Imaginative Conservative and The Federalist, asked.

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UPDATE: Facebook’s response.

After the “hate speech” identification options disappeared, a Facebook spokesperson explained the situation to PJ Media.

“This was an internal test we were working on to understand different types of speech, including speech we thought would not be hate,” the spokesperson said. “A bug caused it to launch publicly. It’s been disabled.”