Facebook has been criticised after taking down the official page for the French town of Bitche.
Local broadcaster Radio Melodie reported that the page was taken down, forcing the municipal communications officer to create a new one under another name.
Ms Valerie Degouy said the new page was named after the town’s post code, Mairie 57230, as reported by Politico.
Ms Degouy said: “I tried to reach out to Facebook in every possible way, through different forms, but there’s nothing [I could] do,” she said, adding she had “already had issues when I first created the page”.
Another of the commune’s towns, Rohrbach-les-Bitches, renamed its page Ville de Rohrbach out of caution.
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In a post explaining the change, the account holder said: “Far from us the idea of denying the name of our beautiful village… [but] Facebook seems to be hunting the term associated with Rohrbach…
“We let you imagine the reason,” they added with a winking and laughing emoji.
As Politico reports, this is not the first time that the town’s name has caused upset for Americans.
Back in 1881, the US embassy was located on the Place de Bitche in Paris, named in honour of the town.
The then ambassador, Levi Parsons Morton, complained about the name as it appeared to be embarrassing on the embassy’s letterhead and Parisian authorities renamed the square Place des Etats-Unis.
A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed to Sky News that the page was removed in error, and had since been “swiftly restored this morning, when we because aware of the issue”.
Source : Sky News : http://news.sky.com/story/facebook-takes-down-official-page-for-french-town-called-bitche-12274237
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