Facebooks algorithm detects 90% of hate speech directed toward Men and White People

I’m not sure which way you meant to post this but the connotation is a little out of context. The article this is from is talking about the fact that the Facebook algorithm that works to stop hate speech/racism is biased and is seriously flawed. As in the comments denigrating white people were the ones being most actively detected. They detail it more in the article I linked to below. Apparently data concerning other targeted minorities in relation to the biased algorithm were not released by FB.

“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, the people said. [anonymous people working at FB privy to a meeting about creating this algorithm]”

“Yet racist posts against minorities weren’t what Facebook’s own hate speech detection algorithms were most commonly finding. The software, which the company introduced in 2015, was supposed to detect and automatically delete hate speech before users saw it. Publicly, the company said in 2019 that its algorithms proactively caught more than 80 percent of hate speech.”

“But this statistic hid a serious problem that was obvious to researchers: The algorithm was aggressively detecting comments denigrating White people more than attacks on every other group, according to several of the documents. One April 2020 document said roughly 90 percent of “hate speech” subject to content takedowns were statements of contempt, inferiority and disgust directed at White people and men, though the time frame is unclear. And it consistently failed to remove the most derogatory, racist content. The Post previously reported on a portion of the project.”

“Researchers also found in 2019 that the hate speech algorithms were out of step with actual reports of harmful speech on the platform. In that year, the researchers discovered that 55 percent of the content users reported to Facebook as most harmful was directed at just four minority groups: Blacks, Muslims, the LGBTQ community and Jews, according to the documents.”

“One of the reasons for these errors, the researchers discovered, was that Facebook’s “race-blind” rules of conduct on the platform didn’t distinguish among the targets of hate speech. In addition, the company had decided not to allow the algorithms to automatically delete many slurs, according to the people, on the grounds that the algorithms couldn’t easily tell the difference when a slur such as the n-word and the c-word was used positively or colloquially within a community. The algorithms were also over-indexing on detecting less harmful content that occurred more frequently, such as “men are pigs,” rather than finding less common but more harmful content.”

“If you don’t do something to check structural racism in your society, you’re going to always end up amplifying it,” one of the people involved with the project told The Post. “And that is exactly what Facebook’s algorithms did.”

“For years, Black users said that those same automated systems also mistook posts about racism as hate speech — sending the user to “Facebook jail” by blocking their account — and made them disproportionate targets of hate speech that the company failed to control. But when civil rights leaders complained, those content moderation issues were routinely dismissed as merely “isolated incidents” or “anecdotal,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a civil rights group that regularly sought more forceful action by the company against hate speech and incitements to violence on Facebook, and has argued that Kaplan should be fired.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/21/facebook-algorithm-biased-race/

I know I basically just posted the whole article but I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding it, someone explain if I am. But if I am, it does not seem to me that anyone is actually reading and therefore this post is way out of context.

/r/MensRights Thread