REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 FACEBOOK’S AUDITORS SAY ITS POLICY DECISIONS ARE A MAJOR SETBACK

 

…This group of freshmen representatives known as “The Squad” were hit by Facebook’s allowing serious hate speech.

From left, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)

 

The Washington Post has shown the “worst of the worst” language being used on Facebook

 

I have personally stayed away from commenting on items that deal with any social media.  But with the founder and CEO latest comments that were counter to even the published internal Facebook research data, I have decided to say something. 

Last year, the hired researchers at Facebook showed executives an example of the kind of hate speech circulating on the social network.  The example was an actual post featuring an image of the four female Democratic freshmen lawmakers, as shown above, and known collectively in the press as “The Squad.”

The example posting individual, whose name was scrubbed-out for privacy reasons referred to the women, two of whom are Muslim, as “swami rag heads.” A comment from another individual used even more vulgar language, referring to the four women of color as “black c---s”.  This is according to internal company documents that were obtained by The Washington Post.

The Post, then presented the “worst of the worst” language used on Facebook and the majority of it was directed at minority groups.  This information is from a two-year effort by a large Facebook team that was working across and for the company. The researchers ended by urging executives to adopt an aggressive overhaul of its software system that would primarily remove only those hateful posts before any Facebook users could see them.

But Facebook’s executives balked at the plan. According to two internal employees familiar with the internal debate, top executives including the vice president for global public policy, Joel Kaplan, feared the new system would tilt the scales by protecting some vulnerable groups over others. A Facebook policy executive prepared a document for Kaplan that raised the potential for backlash from their “conservative partners,” according to the document. (These people at Facebook spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal Facebook matters.)

At a news conference in July 2019. A Facebook post that contained hate speech targeting the above four lawmaker representatives was used as an example by Facebook executives to survey a group on what they perceive as harmful language.

The previously unreported debate is an example of how Facebook’s decisions in the name of being neutral and race-blind in fact come at the expense of minorities and particularly people of color. Far from protecting Black and other minority users, Facebook executives wound up instituting half-measures after the “worst of the worst” project that left minorities more likely to encounter derogatory and racist language on the site.

“Even though [Facebook executives] don’t have any animus toward people of color, their actions are on the side of racists,” said Tatenda Musapatike, a former Facebook manager working on political ads and CEO of the Voter Formation Project.  This is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, that uses digital communication to increase participation in local, state and national elections. “You are saying that the health and safety of women of color on the platform is not as important as pleasing your rich White man friends.”

The Black audience on Facebook is now in decline.  This is according to data from a study Facebook conducted earlier this year that was revealed in documents obtained by the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen. (Who has already testified her findings to a congressional committee.)

According to the February Facebook report, the number of Black monthly users fell 2.7% in just one month, or 17.3 million adults. It also shows that usage by Black people had peaked in September 2020. Haugen’s legal counsel provided redacted versions of the actual documents to Congress, which were viewed by a consortium of news organizations including The Washington Post.

Civil rights groups have long claimed that Facebook’s algorithms and policies had a disproportionately negative impact on minorities, and particularly Black users. The “worst of the worst” documents show that those allegations were largely true in the case of which hate speech was allowed to remain online.

But Facebook didn’t disclose its findings to civil rights leaders. Even the independent civil rights auditors Facebook hired in 2018 to conduct a major study of racial issues on its platform say they were not informed of the details of research that the company’s algorithms disproportionately harmed minorities. Laura Murphy, president of Laura Murphy and Associates, who led the civil rights audit process, said Facebook told her that “the company does not capture data as to the protected group(s) against whom the hate speech was directed.”

“I am not asserting nefarious intent, but it is deeply concerning that metrics that showed the disproportionate impact of hate directed at Black, Jewish, Muslim, Arab and LGBTQIA users were not shared with the auditors,” Murphy said. “Clearly, they have collected some data along these lines.”

Facebook hired auditors, in the report they released last year, still concluded that Facebook’s policy decisions were a “tremendous setback” for civil rights.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone defended the company’s decisions around its hate speech policies and how it conducted its relationship with the civil rights auditors.

“The worst of the worst project helped show us what kinds of hate speech our technology was and was not effectively detecting and understand what forms of it people believe to be the most insidious,” Stone said.

He said that progress on racial issues included policies such as banning white nationalist groups, prohibiting content promoting racial stereotypes such as people wearing blackface or claims that Jews control the media, and reducing the prevalence of hate speech to .03% of content on the platform.

However, that .03 percent does not agree with what has been stated by the whistleblowers that say that number is incorrect and very little has been done to reduce the amount of hate speech on the Facebook platform.

Facebook said it approached the civil rights audit with “transparency and openness” and was proud of the progress it has made on issues of race, Stone said.  (Yeah  right.)

Stone noted that the company had implemented parts of the “worst of the worst” project. “But after a rigorous internal discussion about these difficult questions, we did not implement all parts as doing so would have actually meant fewer automated removals of hate speech such as statements of inferiority about women or expressions of contempt about multiracial people,” he added.

(That sure sounds like someone trying to justify the lack of removal of hate speech from the platform.)

In other words, Facebook is continuing to selectively allow some level of hate speech, apparently to not offend a large conservative part of the Facebook users that have made Facebook a highly profitable monopoly in the social media marketplace.

Does all of this information just prove that maybe it is time to break-up this monopoly?

Copyright G. Ater 2021