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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 29 July 2022

In a 3rd test, Facebook still fails to

block hate speech

failed to do so. In Myan-
mar, one of the ads used
a slur to refer to people of
east Indian or Muslim origin
and call for their killing. In
Ethiopia, the ads used de-
humanizing hate speech to
call for the murder of peo-
ple belonging to each of
Ethiopia's three main ethnic
groups — the Amhara, the
Oromo and the Tigrayans.
Why ads and not regular
posts? That's because Meta
claims to hold advertise-
The Facebook app is shown in the app store on a smart phone ments to an "even stricter"
in Surfside, Fla., on April 23, 2021. standard than regular, un-
Associated Press paid posts, according to its
help center page for paid
By BARBARA ORTUTAY paigner at London-based advertisements.
AP Technology Writer Global Witness. Meta has consistently re-
Facebook is letting violent The ads were never posted fused to say how many
hate speech slip through its to Facebook. But the fact content moderators it has
controls in Kenya as it has in that they easily could have in countries where English is
other countries, according been shows that despite not the primary language.
to a new report from the repeated assurances that it This includes moderators in
nonprofit groups Global would do better, Facebook Kenya, Myanmar and oth-
Witness and Foxglove. parent Meta still appears to er regions where material
It is the third such test of regularly fail to detect hate posted on the company's
Facebook's ability to de- speech and calls for vio- platforms has been linked
tect hateful language lence on its platform. to real-world violence.
— either via artificial intel- Global Witness said it Kenya is readying for a na-
ligence or human modera- reached out to Meta af- tional election in August.
tors — that the groups have ter its ads were accepted On July 20, Meta posted
run, and that the company for publication but did not a detailed blog post on
has failed. receive a response. On how it is preparing for the
The ads, which the groups Thursday, however, Global country's election, includ-
submitted both in English Witness said it did receive a ing establishing an "opera-
and in Swahili, spoke of be- response earlier in July but tions center" and removing
headings, rape and blood- it was lost in a spam folder. harmful content.
shed. They compared peo- Meta also confirmed Thurs- "In the six months leading
ple to donkeys and goats. day it sent a response. up to April 30, 2022, we
Some also included pro- "We've taken extensive took action on more than
fanity and grammatical er- steps to help us catch hate 37,000 pieces of content for
rors. The Swahili language speech and inflamma- violating our Hate Speech
ads easily made it through tory content in Kenya, and policies on Facebook and
Facebook's detection sys- we're intensifying these ef- Instagram in Kenya. During
tems and were approved forts ahead of the election. that same period, we also
for publication. We have dedicated teams took action on more than
As for the English ads, some of Swahili speakers and 42,000 pieces of content
were rejected at first, but proactive detection tech- that violated our Violence
only because they con- nology to help us remove & Incitement policies,"
tained profanities and mis- harmful content quickly wrote Mercy Ndegwa, di-
takes in addition to hate and at scale," Meta said in rector of public policy in
speech. Once the pro- a statement. "Despite these East & Horn of Africa.
fanities were removed and efforts, we know that there Global Witness said it resub-
grammar errors fixed, how- will be examples of things mitted two of its ads, one
ever, the ads — still calling we miss or we take down in English and one in Swa-
for killings and containing in error, as both machines hili, after Meta published its
obvious hate speech — and people make mis- blog post to see if anything
went through without a takes. That's why we have has changed. Once again,
hitch. teams closely monitoring the ads went through.
"We were surprised to see the situation and address- "If you're not catching
that our ads had for the ing these errors as quickly these 20 ads, this 37,000
first time been flagged, but as possible." number that you are cel-
they hadn't been flagged Each time Global Witness ebrating, that is probably
for the much more impor- has submitted ads with bla- the tip of the iceberg. You
tant reasons that we ex- tant hate speech to see if have to think that there's a
pected them to be," said Facebook's systems would lot that's (slipping through)
Nienke Palstra, senior cam- catch it, the company your filter," Palstra said.q