Bitche is back as Facebook reinstates French town’s ‘offensive’ home page

Facebook France has apologised to the eastern French town of Bitche after the social network’s algorithm wiped its municipal page, mistaking it for an English-language insult.

Bitche, population 5,205, is a picturesque citadel inside the Vosges natural park on the German border known for its 13th-century fortress, beautiful rolling countryside and forests.

However, it hit the headlines for altogether different reasons after it transpired that Facebook had unpublished the town hall’s page, Ville de Bitche, on the social media site last month.

The disappearance was first reported by Radio Mélodie, which ran the headline on social media: “Don’t ever call me Bitche again.”

“On 19 March, Facebook informed us that [the page] was no longer published on the grounds that it ‘violates conditions applied to Facebook pages'," Bitche Mayor Benôit Kieffer said in a statement.

Unable to retrieve the lost page, the town was forced to come up with a new name and settled for “Mairie 57230”, its postal code.

While hardly an eye-catching alternative, it said it had little choice given that “the appeal procedure can last several months”.

There were even fears that censorship could spread elsewhere as the town nestles in a lush area called Pays de Bitche (Country of Bitche) which has several nearby villages with names that also include the “B” word.

One of them, Rohrbach-lès-Bitche decided to take preemptive action by changing its name before it was given the chop.

The news sparked irate online comments with one French Twitter user exclaiming that the plucky town, which has several times resisted German invasion, had now fallen foul of "cancel culture and right-mindedness."

However, with media attention mounting, Facebook on Tuesday brought Bitche back to life.

“Ville de Bitche’s Facebook page is back up,” confirmed the Mayor in a message on the social network and the town’s website.

“The CEO of Facebook France contacted the Mayor in person to inform him that the town of Bitche’s page was once again online and to apologise for any inconvenience caused,” he wrote.

He added: “What has happened today to Bitche demonstrates the failings and the limits of moderation tools that only a human eye can judge."

He then invited Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to visit Bitche in person “to discover our pretty citadel” but also to “honour…the memory of his compatriots”, pointing out that “our American friends, under the banner of the 100th infantry division” had “come all the way from South Carolina” to free the town from German occupation in 1945.

Henceforth, he added : “Our liberators went on to refer to themselves with pride as the ‘Sons of Bitche’.”