This afternoon, the Facebook page of the Accademia della Crusca, a historic Florentine research body on the Italian language, which had been blocked by the same social network on 21 December, became visible again this afternoon. “After the news of the blocked page came out – explains Marco Biffi, academic web manager for Crusca – we were contacted by Meta” the company that manages Facebook, “who wanted to understand the situation. We explained to them what happened and then the page is back online. We didn’t understand what the reason for the blocking was, it was only explained to us that it was probably an error.”
It was Crusca itself, a historic Florentine research body on the Italian language, that reported the blackout. When the academics reported the problem, no response was received from the social network. “Unfortunately – explains Crusca in a notice published on its website – for a few days, the Academy’s Facebook profile has been “obscured. We do not know the reasons for this measure, which causes us considerable concern and great disappointment at not being able to reach our readers on that channel as usual. The profile is currently awaiting a check by the company: we don’t know how long this operation will take, but we hope that what we believe to be a mix-up will be resolved as soon as possible.”
The blocking of the profile dates back to December 21st. “In the last post published before Christmas – explains Marco Biffi, academic web manager for Crusca – we announced the start of a new Christmas column dedicated to dialect words linked to the Nativity. Attached there was a ‘dialect card’, that is, a a sort of geographical map of Italy which shows the specific dialect words of that locality instead of cities. But we see no reason to block this content”. Biffi also explains that “on our management page we found indications that our posts may have been covered because they contain ‘strong images’, but in reality it is not clear why they blocked us”. According to academics, the error could be in Facebook’s algorithm. “The social network works with algorithms – Biffi continues – there has most likely been an error, it can happen, but the scandalous thing is that three weeks after our report no response has yet been received”.
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