
Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech' - ddebernardy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech
======
danso
> _What must have seemed like a benign social media strategy managed to fall
> foul of Facebook’s algorithmic censors, which labeled sections of the
> declaration hate speech and removed the posts._

Do we know that this was the action of an "algorithmic censor"? I mean, one of
the _automated_ censors? My impression was that Facebook still has many human
censors [0] in its employ, many of them outsourced in non-U.S. countries. It's
possible that a human user flagged this Declaration of Independence post, and
a human censor approved the flagging/censoring of it.

Yes, I know that "algorithm", broadly defined, could include a process in
which a human user flags something for a human censor, but that's not how
"algorithmic censors" is typically used in this context.

[0] [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-
facebook...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-
guidelines-20180424-story.html)

~~~
jaquers
Does it matter? There was a problem, they apologized and corrected it.

FB has been under intense scrutiny for providing a platform for hate speech,
so why should we be surprised that they use automated means to decrease the
lead time between posting and removal?

That phrase _is_ hate speech, it just happens to be contained within one of
the founding documents of the US. While it is a worthwhile goal for the
algorithm to understand the context of it - I don't think we're quite there
yet, and I would rather have a few false positives than the avalanche of shit
that would exist without it.

As to whether a human removed it, I suspect that from the perspective of the
person doing it, it's better to err on the side of caution than lose your job;
especially a non-US citizen.

~~~
danso
Yes, it matters. People need to have a better understanding of how these
processes work, and not just to think everything related to big-tech is solved
by machine learning.

~~~
s2g
> not just to think everything related to big-tech is solved by machine
> learning.

In fairness, I think most people realize that a significant number of problems
are actually solved by blockchain instead.

~~~
tuesdayrain
I always assume someone doesn't know anything about blockchains when they call
it "blockchain". It's just a data structure

------
parliament32
Basically a case study in why automated/preemptive content filtering is a bad
idea. Let users report bad content, investigate it once it reaches a certain
number of reports.

------
s2g
Facebook correctly labels hateful sections of the declaration of independence
as hateful.

not as catchy a title I guess.

~~~
karlmcguire
Censoring historical documents is now considered "correct."

Wow.

~~~
cft
Time to learn Chinese

