Undercover Facebook Moderator Was Instructed Not to Remove Hate Speech

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Nick Statt, writing at The Verge:

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.
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Burn it all down.

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*sigh*

at this point i would be entirely okay with facebook just disappearing. i realize that's probably not ever going to happen. but it's become such a weird, twisted...thing, so different from what it used to be. once upon a time it was a genuine way to stay connected with people. now it's nothing but memes, clickbait, and bullshit propaganda. how it's even still operating is beyond me.

 

https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account

 

When it does go down, I hope I have enough notice to get email addresses from everyone I know. The only thing I really use it for anymore is as an alternative to email or other instant messaging applications, and I so rarely even know my friends' email addresses.

 

I wonder if the average user age has increased on FB? I remember being a freshman in college and having to have a .edu email to access FB. Then once it opened up to everyone, it slowly began to lose its focus.

Most people I know under 23 don't use FB as their primary social media source, where as it seems everyone's parents/aunts/uncles are all in on FB.

 

I completely forgot they own IG, they just migrated younger users from one platform to another. MZ truly is living up the characterization that Fincher created of him in The Social Network. I don't understand his unwillingness to take stand.

 

#bringbackmyspace

 

I'm all about Pinterest these days.

 

I try to use FB as little as possible now. I actually use Instagram as a messenger more often than I actually use FB messenger. If I didn't have a few groups I use to stay in touch with friends, I'd delete it tomorrow.

 

I once deleted my FB account back in 2014, but a year later I had to create a new one 'cause I needed it for some university-related activities. I'm not an active user, nor I've been one in the past, I just use it for stayin' updated on music news (like date releases, tour news, new songs and stuff) and for a few other things. I've sorta created a personal safe zone, 'cause I'm so tired of all the hate-filled thoughts a lot of people just seems to literally spew out on a mere social network like it's a matter of life and death.

I've never had a doubt about the fact that Facebook isn't actually 'actively trying to cut down on fake news, propaganda, hate speech, and other harmful content that may have significant real-world impact'. Just think about my country, Italy: our Interior Minister is a far-right Eurosceptic who shares his racist and demagogic agenda on Facebook on a daily basis, and the comment section under every single one of his posts is a tsunami of racism and bigotry; the most voted party in the last political elections literally built his election campaign on fake news, and they're still using them as a government tool; far-right movements who manifestly claim that they're neofascist, they preach identitarism and xenophobia on Facebook and other social media (and there's even a law in Italy that provides for the crime of apology of fascism). Aren't these all examples of propaganda and hate speech that may have a real-world impact? Where do we draw the line?

 

Lengthier post, so I hope I've explained what's coming through my head in a clear way since I'm not a native English speaker.