After an incorrect removal of their Facebook page, life is miserable in a French village.

Photo Credit (Pixels)

It was speculated that ‘Bitche’ might have been mistaken for an English insult by Facebook’s algorithm.

Bitche’s official Facebook profile was inadvertently deleted by the social media platform.

With a little over 5,000 residents, the little village is located in the Moselle region close to the German border.

It uses social media to interact with the public on a daily basis. However, the town’s Facebook account has been inaccessible since March 19 without any reason given.

The prevailing belief was that the Facebook algorithm might have mistaken the silent ‘e’ pronunciation of ‘Bitche’ for an insult in the English language.

The town’s Facebook page was taken down, according to a statement from mayor Benoît Kieffer, since it was “in violation of the conditions applicable to Facebook pages”.

In order to stay in touch with the locals, the town’s administration set up a new Facebook profile called “Mairie 57230,” which is titled after the town’s postcode.

Facebook has deleted the town’s official page,” the town announced. “We’ve filed an appeal, but it’s still invisible right now.

“The appeal process can take several months, so we have created this page to continue communicating with you on social networks.”

The town’s name remains the avatar emblem on the recently established Facebook profile.

“We appealed and tried to contact Facebook through various means, including contact forms and private messages on the Facebook France page,” stated Kieffer.

“The town’s Facebook page was hosted in a data centre located in Europe and hypothetically we assume that our page has migrated to an Anglo-Saxon server that has moderation and algorithms in place that remove illegal and problematic content,” he stated.

“The name of our town seemed to suffer from a misinterpretation.”

Bitche representative Valérie Degouy also said on local radio that she had run into issues when she initially attempted to set up the town’s Facebook profile.

Facebook told Euronews that an inaccurate analysis by the platform’s technologies had resulted in the account being unpublished.

The business also stated that it looked into the problem right away. It stated that Tuesday morning saw the page restored.

“Facebook France teams have contacted authorities in the town of Bitche to inform them that the Facebook Page is live on our platform again.”

However, Kieffer has criticized Facebook’s content policing techniques and asserted that the social media giant needs to own up to its standards.

“What happened to the town of Bitche demonstrates the inadequacy and limitations of moderation tools that only a human eye can appreciate, particularly with regard to the verification of sources,” Kieffer said.

“The most surprising thing is that it took so long for Facebook to correct this incident,” he stated.

Additionally, the mayor announced that he had extended an invitation to Facebook France’s president and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to come see “our beautiful fortified town”.

Renaming their social media pages to “Ville de Rohrbach” has also helped other towns in the Moselle region, such Rohrbach-lès-Bitche, to escape being taken down.

“Far from the idea of us denying the name of our beautiful village, but we have to admit that Facebook seems to hunt the term associated with Rohrbach,” the municipality stated.

“We will let you imagine the reason why,” it continued.