How ‘LSD’ in a town’s name led Facebook on a bad content trip

Residents of Coulsdon are unhappy with Facebook

Folks of Coulsdon–a town in south London within the London Borough of Croydon–have run into Facebook’s undeserving censorship. The algorithms of Meta expunged the content from the Facebook business pages of “businesses, community groups, arts organisations and residents” of Coulsdon because they picked on the “lsd” part of the word in the name of town, as per a local news blog Inside Croydon. Believing the Facebook pages of business from Coulsdon had something to do with the drug, Meta also reportedly served them warnings.

“Residents’ associations and businesses with “Coulsdon” in their titles have found themselves “cancelled”, with posts being removed from Facebook and warnings issued as to their future conduct under a set of rules so vague that any post, however innocent, might fall foul of them”, says the blog post on Inside Croydon.

As per the blog post, the ‘LSD’ matter has affected the Facebook pages of “East Coulsdon Residents’ Association, Coulsdon West RA, Coulsdon History, the Coulsdon Oral History Project, Theatre Workshop Coulsdon, Coulsdon Home Hardware, Coulsdon Mums and Dads, Coulsdon Victoria Club…”

The report adds that efforts to contact Meta on the Coulsdon issue have remained fruitless and no one from the social media giant bothers to respond.

It’s not the first time Meta's algorithms have erred, leading to the censoring of content. Earlier this year, Meta’s algorithms flagged posts about wildfires on the West Coast as “misleading” spam. Three years back, Facebook banned people who made posts related to the Plymouth Hole landmark in Plymouth. It later apologised to English folks for the mistake.

However, in a statement given to Gizmodo, Dave Arnold, a Meta spokesperson, said on the Coulsdon issue that “this was an error that has now been fixed.”