An investigative journalist who went undercover as a
Facebook moderator in the UK says the company lets pages from far-right
fringe groups “exceed deletion threshold,” and that those pages are
“subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging
to governments and news organizations.” The accusation is a damning one,
undermining Facebook’s claims
that it is actively trying to cut down on fake news, propaganda, hate
speech, and other harmful content that may have significant real-world
impact.
The undercover journalist detailed his findings in a new documentary titled Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network, that just aired on the UK’s Channel 4. The investigation outlines questionable practices on behalf of CPL Resources, a third-party content moderator firm based in Dublin, Ireland that Facebook has worked with since 2010.
Those questionable practices primarily involve a
hands-off approach to flagged and reported content like graphic
violence, hate speech, and racist and other bigoted rhetoric from
far-right groups. The undercover reporter says he was also instructed to
ignore users who looked as if they were under 13 years of age, which is
the minimum age requirement to sign up for Facebook in accordance with
the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 privacy law passed in the US
designed to protect young children from exploitation and harmful and
violent content on the internet. The documentary insinuates that
Facebook takes a hands-off approach to such content, including blatantly
false stories parading as truth, because it engages users for longer
and drives up advertising revenue.
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