Internal Facebook documents revealed that company executives knew that the platform 's algorithm allowed hate speech and promoted prejudice against people of color, but failed to address this problem.
The posts against people of color were discovered by Facebook researchers. The project, dubbed the 'worst of the worst' project, included posts promoting hate speech that had been shared on the platform. In fact, there were ten extreme examples. Of those, five targeted people of color, two targeted members of the LGBTQ community, and the remaining three targeted women, Mexican Americans, and white people, according to the Washington Post.
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One of the posts included a photo of four Democratic congresswomen collectively known as “The Squad.” The photo showed Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley at a press conference in July 2019.
Along with the photo was a racist comment against Tlaib and Omar, as they are both Muslim. Another user referred to the entire group as “black c***s.”
Another post showed a photo of a chimpanzee wearing a long-sleeved shirt and was accompanied by a caption that read: "Here's one of Michelle Obama."
"The only humanitarian aid needed at the border is a few hundred machine gun turrets with motion sensors. Problem solved," another post reads.
This is the latest scandal to hit Facebook, which was renamed Meta in late October in an attempt to distance itself from various other scandals that have come to light recently.
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The company began to face many problems when former executive Frances Haugen leaked internal documents and claimed that Facebook “puts profits above people.”
Reports of hate speech promoting racismhad already surfaced in 2019, when Facebook researchers urged company executives to monitor and remove posts that expressed racism towards of color people.
However, some company executives, such as vice president Joel Kaplan, reportedly disapproved of some of these ideas, as they believed that this would make the site appear more favorable towards only certain groups.
“Although Facebook executives have no animosity towards people of color, their actions are on the side of racists,” said Tatenda Musapatike, a former Facebook manager.
Civil rights groups have long alleged that Facebook’s algorithms and policies have had a disproportionately negative impact on minorities, particularly people of color. The “worst of the worst” documents show that these claims were largely true.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone defended the company, saying: “The worst of the worst project helped us understand what types of hate speech our technology could or could not effectively detect.”
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Stone also added that the company had begun to include policies to reduce hate speech and ban content that promotes racial stereotypes.
Stone noted that the company had implemented parts of the “worst of the worst” project, but not all of it because those measures would not help automatically remove racist comments targeting other groups.
It should be noted that the company has implemented policies for several years to address racist content and hate speech, but according to researchers, these policies were not enough to address racist comments targeting people of color or Muslims, LGBTQ members, etc.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
