Over the last few days, people are reposting this meme depicting a crowd of people on a sidewalk with a small flower growing up from a crack in a sidewalk. The meme simply states:

Stand up for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone

Nothing demeaning or bad about those words. In fact, they're quite inspiring, to say the least. Why is it then that Facebook is showing it as being sensitive content? You can still see the picture, but you must go an extra step and tell Facebook to show it to you.

There is one post featuring the little meme showing over 19,000 shares. So people seem to enjoy what it means, and it doesn't seem offensive at all actually. So exactly what gives?

The theories began to run amuck as to what is actually happening with this picture. One theory was that there is a green light in the magnifying lens and that is telling people to speak freely and do as they please. Solid theory. Me being the ever non-believer in conspiracy theories, until proven real, kept digging on.

Some people were convinced it was just a gaggle of internet trolls going through and complaining about the photo. After enough times, Facebook would just flag it as bad. Trust me, I love a good trolling party but that is not the reason.

As I searched my way around for some answers, I ran across an article from Truth of Fiction. As I read the article, I could tell this was going to give me a few answers that I was looking for. Facebook works off of artificial intelligence for the most part. It has a set of rules that it goes off of and that it looks for. That includes weapons. How is a flower a weapon? You might ask. Well, I will tell you because I didn't notice it at first.

Tiffany Annette Case-Vaeth is a commenter on "Blessed Little Homestead". In a thread involving the subject, she made an observation.

...the problem is if you look to the upper right near the street light. It looks like a knife coming down towards the people. If you crop the "knife" out of the photo then post it. It doesn't block it [the photo].

Tiffany then went on to do that exact thing. She cropped the "knife out" and posted the photo like it was a normal post. Low and behold, the picture was not flagged for sensitive content.

Facebook Meme
Facebook Meme
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There you have it. The "knife" was cropped out, and the picture was not flagged at all. I am all for conspiracy theories. Some of them are absolutely amazing and end up being pretty factual. Then on the other hand, sometimes it's not all that it seems, as much as we possibly might want it to be. Let this maybe be a lesson of life on its own. You might think everything is perfect about something, but there is always that little detail that can possibly hold you back. It's why we need to look at the big picture when moving forward.

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