Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech'

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech

by ddebernardy • 8 years ago

36 18 8 years ago

danso3• 8 years ago

What must have seemed like a benign social media strategy managed to fall foul of Facebook’s algorithmic censors, which labeled sections of the declaration hate speech and removed the posts.

Do we know that this was the action of an "algorithmic censor"? I mean, one of the automated censors? My impression was that Facebook still has many human censors [0] in its employ, many of them outsourced in non-U.S. countries. It's possible that a human user flagged this Declaration of Independence post, and a human censor approved the flagging/censoring of it.

Yes, I know that "algorithm", broadly defined, could include a process in which a human user flags something for a human censor, but that's not how "algorithmic censors" is typically used in this context.

[0] http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook...

jaquers2• 8 years ago

Does it matter? There was a problem, they apologized and corrected it.

FB has been under intense scrutiny for providing a platform for hate speech, so why should we be surprised that they use automated means to decrease the lead time between posting and removal?

That phrase is hate speech, it just happens to be contained within one of the founding documents of the US. While it is a worthwhile goal for the algorithm to understand the context of it - I don't think we're quite there yet, and I would rather have a few false positives than the avalanche of shit that would exist without it.

As to whether a human removed it, I suspect that from the perspective of the person doing it, it's better to err on the side of caution than lose your job; especially a non-US citizen.

danso3• 8 years ago

Yes, it matters. People need to have a better understanding of how these processes work, and not just to think everything related to big-tech is solved by machine learning.

s2g2• 8 years ago

Facebook correctly labels hateful sections of the declaration of independence as hateful.

not as catchy a title I guess.

karlmcguire• 8 years ago

Censoring historical documents is now considered "correct."

Wow.

retox• 8 years ago

Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech'

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