On Sunday, Facebook responded to a news report that its artificial intelligence (AI) program has had little impact at curbing and eliminating content containing hate speech and violence from the social network platform. The Wall Street Journal cited internal documents from 2019 in its article that the social network’s engineers considered the company’s algorithms to remove only a small portion of questionable content that violates rules.
“The problem is that we do not and possibly never will have a model of Facebook AI that captures even a majority of integrity harms, particularly in sensitive areas,” a senior engineer and research scientist recorded in a mid-2019 note, according to the Journal.
Facebook Has Been Under the Radar Since the Riot on Capitol Hill
The corporation has been under more scrutiny to do a better job of managing content especially after the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, which emphasized how online hate speech and violence can spill into the real world. However, Facebook disputes that the prevalence of content containing hate speech and violence on the platform has diminished almost 50% in the past three quarters to roughly 0.05% of content views, or about 5 out of every 10,000 views.
Facebook Has Been Transparent About its Work in Curbing Hate Speech and Violence
“Data pulled from leaked documents is being used to create a narrative that the Facebook AI we use to fight hate speech and violence is inadequate and that we deliberately misrepresent our progress,” Facebook Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen wrote in a blog post on Sunday. “This is not true. We don’t want to see hate on our platform, nor do our users or advertisers, and we are transparent about our work to remove it,” Rosen wrote.
Furthermore, the corporation has been spending more time in the weeks after Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower, exposed thousands of documents and in-house communications that explained Facebook was conscious of the dangers of its products but downplayed these consequences publicly. Legislators across the federal spectrum have so far replied with revived interest in holding Facebook to account for recent events.
Read more: Facebook Announces Global Expansion of Live Audio Rooms for Popular Content Creators
