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Facebook's Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children (propublica.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the woefully-ill-equipped dept.

Sidney Fussell from Gizmodo summarizes a report from ProPublica, which brings to light dozens of training documents used by Facebook to train moderators on hate speech: As the trove of slides and quizzes reveals, Facebook uses a warped, one-sided reasoning to balance policing hate speech against users' freedom of expression on the platform. This is perhaps best summarized by the above image from one of its training slideshows, wherein Facebook instructs moderators to protect "White Men," but not "Female Drivers" or "Black Children." Facebook only blocks inflammatory remarks if they're used against members of a "protected class." But Facebook itself decides who makes up a protected class, with lots of clear opportunities for moderation to be applied arbitrarily at best and against minoritized people critiquing those in power (particularly white men) at worst -- as Facebook has been routinely accused of. According to the leaked documents, here are the group identifiers Facebook protects: Sex, Religious affiliation, National origin, Gender identity, Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Serious disability or disease. And here are those Facebook won't protect: Social class, continental origin, appearance, age, occupation, political ideology, religions, countries. Subsets of groups -- female drivers, Jewish professors, gay liberals -- aren't protected either, as ProPublica explains: White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected.

4 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Somewhat misleading headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reason for the headline is that "children" is not a protected category, while skin color and gender both are.

    It's entirely about the words.
    "white men" are protected exactly as much as "black men" or "white women" or "black women", because both the noun and the adjective refer to protected categories.

    "black children" are protected, likewise, just as much as "white children" or "white adults" or "black adults"-- the second word in the phrase is not a protected category.

    1. Re:Somewhat misleading headline by omnichad · · Score: 4, Informative

      Misleading all around. But "black children" shouldn't be protected less than simply "black" but it appears to be the case in the article.

    2. Re:Somewhat misleading headline by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Informative

      "All white people are racist. Start from this reference point, or you've already failed,"

      is quite a bit different than

      a U.S. congressman wrote a Facebook post in which he called for the slaughter of "radicalized" Muslims. "Hunt them, identify them, and kill them," declared U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican. "Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all."

      one is racist (ALL whites) and one is talking about "radical" islam, meaning the people we are actually at war with, ISIS and other groups

      it makes perfect sense why one of them, while still pretty harsh, isnt to the same level of being racist

      attacking a violent subset vs attacking a group based on their color

      facebook has a problem, but the comparisong isnt quite apples to apples

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  2. Re:Who'd a Thunk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you read it it will also protect black men but not white children.