Facebook Ignored Racial Bias Research, Employees Say (nbcnews.com) 105
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: In mid-2019, researchers at Facebook began studying a new set of rules proposed for the automated system that Instagram uses to remove accounts for bullying and other infractions. What they found was alarming. Users on the Facebook-owned Instagram in the United States whose activity on the app suggested they were Black were about 50 percent more likely under the new rules to have their accounts automatically disabled by the moderation system than those whose activity indicated they were white, according to two current employees and one former employee, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media. The findings were echoed by interviews with Facebook and Instagram users who said they felt that the platforms' moderation practices were discriminatory, the employees said.
The researchers took their findings to their superiors, expecting that it would prompt managers to quash the changes. Instead, they were told not share their findings with co-workers or conduct any further research into racial bias in Instagram's automated account removal system. Instagram ended up implementing a slightly different version of the new rules but declined to let the researchers test the new version. It was an episode that frustrated employees who wanted to reduce racial bias on the platform but one that they said did not surprise them. Facebook management has repeatedly ignored and suppressed internal research showing racial bias in the way that the platform removes content, according to eight current and former employees, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal Facebook business. The lack of action on this issue from the management has contributed to a growing sense among some Facebook employees that a small inner circle of senior executives -- including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs and communications, and Joel Kaplan, vice president of global public policy -- are making decisions that run counter to the recommendations of subject matter experts and researchers below them, particularly around hate speech, violence and racial bias, the employees said. Facebook did not deny that some researchers were told to stop exploring racial bias but said that it was because the methodology used was flawed.
"We are actively investigating how to measure and analyze internet products along race and ethnic lines responsibly and in partnership with other companies," Facebook spokeswoman Carolyn Glanville added, noting that the company established a team of experts last year, called Responsible AI, focused on "understanding fairness and inclusion concerns" related to the deployment of artificial intelligence in Facebook products.
The researchers took their findings to their superiors, expecting that it would prompt managers to quash the changes. Instead, they were told not share their findings with co-workers or conduct any further research into racial bias in Instagram's automated account removal system. Instagram ended up implementing a slightly different version of the new rules but declined to let the researchers test the new version. It was an episode that frustrated employees who wanted to reduce racial bias on the platform but one that they said did not surprise them. Facebook management has repeatedly ignored and suppressed internal research showing racial bias in the way that the platform removes content, according to eight current and former employees, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal Facebook business. The lack of action on this issue from the management has contributed to a growing sense among some Facebook employees that a small inner circle of senior executives -- including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs and communications, and Joel Kaplan, vice president of global public policy -- are making decisions that run counter to the recommendations of subject matter experts and researchers below them, particularly around hate speech, violence and racial bias, the employees said. Facebook did not deny that some researchers were told to stop exploring racial bias but said that it was because the methodology used was flawed.
"We are actively investigating how to measure and analyze internet products along race and ethnic lines responsibly and in partnership with other companies," Facebook spokeswoman Carolyn Glanville added, noting that the company established a team of experts last year, called Responsible AI, focused on "understanding fairness and inclusion concerns" related to the deployment of artificial intelligence in Facebook products.
How did they know the race? (Score:2, Insightful)
Was the guessing of the race done by the same AI as the one recommending the disabling, or by a different system? Was it accurate?
If the guessing was wrong, the guessing system may have had a bias (from somewhere) — not
Re:How did they know the race? (Score:5, Insightful)
This accusation is the spawn of "disparate impact". When you establish a set of objective rules, and one group seems to be affected more than other groups.
The charge always goes to some kind of, "ism" instead of looking at the data to see why one group is affected more.
Probably because the answer is not politically correct.
Re:How did they know the race? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well of course it is not. The A.I. does not look at the picture of the user, it does not have access to the race tag, etc. It is checking for the presence of certain words, and probably flags users who overuse the F-word, the N-word, the B-word, etc.
The people who designed the A.I. were lazy or ignorant. Clearly, if the B-word is used by a woman, it is no more offensive than the N-word used by a African-American, or the F-word used by a handsome stud.
If the damn programmers had done their job properly, instead of sacrificing living, breathing people on the altar of 'objectivity' *spit*, they would have had such disparate outcomes.
Racist, probably. Just like those racist cops who manage to get killed by Blacks in a much higher proportion than the percentage of Blacks in the general population. Go ahead, find a list of slain cops, and do the math yourself. See how many cops are killed by people who are neither Black recidivists, nor White supremacists.
Clearly, those racist thugs with a badge are going out of their way to tarnish the good names of some subsets of society.
So the racist programmers who shame Black people for using their beautiful, expressive language are just tools of oppression.
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The charge always goes to some kind of, "ism" instead of looking at the data to see why one group is affected more. Probably because the answer is not politically correct.
Am I guessing correctly that you haven't read the study, don't know what they controlled for, but through the grace of the Almighty you know what is really going on? If so, how does it feel to sincerely believe every hot take that pops into your mind?
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The post doesn't link any studies.
It says that users of certain race were "50% more likely" to have the acc disabled.
This should be relevant only if AI was able to check the race of the people. I.e. if changing your picture from white skinned to dark skinned would somehow increase your chances of being banned.
Think about how training AI to detect offensive posts even works:
* There is a bunch of input posts, some are good, some are banable.
* "Neuron" weights are adjusted to, given the known i
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This accusation is the spawn of "disparate impact". When you establish a set of objective rules, and one group seems to be affected more than other groups.
When facebook does something that disproportionally affects one race, it's amazing to see people I have already marked as "foe" fall over themsleves to give facebook the broadest possible benefit of the doubt, something they'd not do under any other circumstances.
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I mean, you're not describing disparate impact properly. Objective rules can be quite racist on face. See the US in the 60's.
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And is it because the algorithm is "prejudiced" or is it because more abusers happen to be black? Let's take an honest look at it and not immediately jump to claims of racism.
Re: How did they know the race? (Score:2)
Re: How did they know the race? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, or sexism.
For example, everyone is up in arms over covid killing minorities disproportionately, but not so much that it kills men disproportionately. Oh, in fact, it's waved off as "lifestyle choices". Try doing that with race, lol.
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What have you personally done for the childbirth mortality that kills women disproportionately? Will you wave it off as it doesn't suit the color of your straw?
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I believe wholeheartedly in MLK's quote: "injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere".
We should absolutely focus on childbirth mortality. I believe there is a focus, perhaps it should have a larger focus.
We should absolutely focus on men being killed disproportionately. Focusing on one injustice doesn't take away from focusing on another injustice. In fact, focusing on any injustice helps all other injustices, unless you disagree with MLK, of course.
Where in your response did you in any way respond
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Perhaps the AI simply looks at all images that are closeups of a face, tag them as potentially a selfie, identify which face shows up the most, and then checks the skin color of that face?
I mean, if I ran a place where people uploaded pictures and wanted to figure out what race they are ... that's what I'd do.
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Most black people will never commit a violent crime so lumping them all together is silly. Once one controls for contributing factors the difference between violent crime and ethnicity becomes vanishingly small much
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Noting the 24% of violent crimes is a good statistical counter argument to the claim that police shoot blacks at higher rates, but that's pretty much all it's good for.
So isn't that a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, by explicitly trying to account for any initial racial bias, one must insert another form of racial bias... even if the latter is only intended to compensate for the former.
I've always maintained that you don't solve racism with more racism, regardless of the intent.
Of course, I'm probably going to be modded as a troll for saying that.... but it's what I believe.
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I mean, by explicitly trying to account for any initial racial bias, one must insert another form of racial bias.
You can't judge bias without cultural context. Blacks call each other "nigga" all the time, but that doesn't mean it's okay for white people to use the word.
Re:So isn't that a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's not OK for white people to use then its not OK for blacks either. Different rules for different groups - especially groups based on skin color - are wrong.
It's insane to me that this has to be explained, yet here we are.
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If it's not OK for white people to use then its not OK for blacks either. Different rules for different groups - especially groups based on skin color - are wrong.
It's insane to me that this has to be explained, yet here we are.
You will be right in a future world of equality that has no race-based culture. In the current world, you are patently wrong, and I suspect you know it. By what moral metric is it equally wrong for black or brown people to say "nigga" as whites? Would you say it does equal harm? Or do you just not like morality itself not being egalitarian?
Re:So isn't that a good thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't demand equality while encouraging inequality. It's pretty f'ing simple.
I read you and those like you as the real racists: "That group can't be held to the same standard, they just don't know any better" is what I hear.
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I read you and those like you as the real racists: "That group can't be held to the same standard, they just don't know any better" is what I hear.
I get it. But you are inferring standards (in my mind) where there are none. I'm not sure what your moral code is, but part of mine is "no harm, no foul". Now may in fact be some harm caused at great distance and dilution--not a direct consequence but a perpetuation of a harmful culture--but is that more harmful than the harm one would do themselves by not participating in a culture where they feel welcome?
So there is simply no such standard (which you imagine I think black people can't be held to). But I d
Re:So isn't that a good thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is it wrong for a white person to say it? You cannot have different rules for different groups and expect society to survive. Perhaps the answer is that all words should be allowed by everyone. We had that once and everyone was better off then because of it.
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Why is it wrong for a white person to say it?
Because it's likely to cause harm due to its basis and close resemblance to a slur, and because it would indeed become a slur if used by one race to refer to another.
You cannot have different rules for different groups and expect society to survive.
There are not different rules for different groups. Rather, a group is allowed to treat itself in a way that other groups are not. Do you never use self deprecation? Do you never tease a social group you are part of? Your very short descriptions of ideal rules strike me as naive. Good human behavior is harder to codify than you are making it ou
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There's the racism of low expectations again. One group is too weak to brush off a slur so the other group shall be prohibited from using it. The offended group shall however be allowed to use the banned word.
Or we could just toughen up and embrace freedom. You know, "freedom" and all the hurt feelings that might go along with it. Get over yourself. Sticks and stones?
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I think you're both right, and it's an interesting exchange of opinion.
Personally i would lean towards banning that word period, since it has a good probability of being used as an insult, and therefore drive all conversations down the drain. Rules that are dependent on who belongs to which not better specified "group" are just too messy to even be considered, IMO.
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Ok, so you assert it's likely to cause material harm.
Do you have evidence for this, and that it is objectively more harmful than the stress of being taunted by use of particular words, when another group using them could land them with a criminal conviction? I mean, good, solid double blind studied evidence, not supposition and hearsay?
By your logic, all groups should be allowed to say what they want. So, it should be fine for any group that chooses to, to use whatever words it wishes. After all, they're
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Consider, non-black child grows up hearing the word used frequently by black people in the neighborhood, uses it himself at school. Is he in trouble? Why or why not? Should he be? Why or why not?
Is it reasonable for the child to conclude from reactions that he is unwelcome in those peer groups? How about if he then refuses to welcome kids into his peer group who have made it clear he is unwelcome in theirs?
Could you (successfully) explain any of that to a nine year old?
The longer you think about that, the e
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If it's not OK for white people to use then its not OK for blacks either. Different rules for different groups - especially groups based on skin color - are wrong.
It's insane to me that this has to be explained, yet here we are.
Perhaps this isn't intentional on your part, but calling black people "blacks" is dehumanizing and racist. The subtle difference implies they're not even people, they're just "the blacks". This is especially egregious when you're using both terms in the same sentence, and pretty ironic in a statement claiming that "Different rules for different groups" are wrong.
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Ironically, you can call white people whites. You can call them "cracker" or "honkey" even on prime time TV in the '70s.
Re:So isn't that a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
You have no idea what really causes backlashes do you?
You can either aim for equality or superiority. MLK always said he had a dream of his kids growing up in a world where their skin colour didn't matter. In about the 90s, there was a fair chance of this. However, people who's power base relied on race division simply pushed things way out the other side to the point where the colour of one's skin is now of paramount importance.
The very definition of racism is assigning a right or virtue to one race over another when it is not objectively visible (i.e. it would be stupid to say someone with a black skin had a bright green skin, because that was obviously not the case. However, saying that they cannot be racist because they have black skin is not an objective fact, it's merely an academic (and hotly contested) point of philosophy. In other words, it's not factual.
Same as using certain words. If it's ok for people of a black skin to use certain words, but deny it to others, then that is racism (assigning a right or virtue to them by dint of their racial heritage).
So, you assert that it's a cultural phenomenon? You understand that it could equally be said to be a cultural phenomenon of someone with white skin to be able to say that as a cultural artifact? If it's allowed culturally in one area, then it's equally allowable in another.
That's ethics 101. Not seeing that means that you aren't actually acting ethically, but are actively engaged in the oppression of a majority, and are actively engaged in racism and bigotry. That is an objective and quantifiable fact.
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To your first paragraph, there is a much simpler explanation. For many different social and racial groups, there are ways that members can talk about the group with impunity; but when outsiders use the same language, members are rubbed the wrong way. For instance, mentioning "The Jews" as a category/group.
To your second paragraph, I don't imbue culture with the power to justify that which would otherwise be immoral. I hope I've explained that above.
And don't be so snarky with comments like "That's ethics 10
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Hmm.. Have you ever seen degrees in Morality?
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Hmm.. Have you ever seen degrees in Morality?
You mean like how I'm being snarky myself but it's not a huge problem due to the small or nonexistent harm it causes? Versus saying something mean to try to ruin someone's afternoon? Versus taking some action to try breaking up family, friends or lovers? How about an action that is arguably good or bad because the outcome depends on (unknowable) assumptions? Suffice to say, yes. But I'm not sure what you are getting at.
Re:So isn't that a good thing? (Score:4, Informative)
In general, I've been mildly snarky due to the tone with which you've been replying to people, with the general air of you having a superior knowledge of things, when in actuality, what you've been (in essence) saying is that you're relying on subjective assessments to override objective ones, and applying sophistry to maintain that air of superiority. As you don't know me, you'll have no idea just how irritated I get at that behaviour; I find it endemic (and to be quite honest, insulting).
Now, this is the internet, so I can't actually tell what's going on with you, the person, so I can only elicit that from the text you write, so I may be missing some rather important clues as to whether you're acting in good faith or not. But most (if not all) the points you've raised so far, you'd have been able to dismiss yourself if you'd had a little introspection, and tried to actually break down your own argument instead of attempting to find disparate subjective matter to try and support your points.
So far, under reducing your arguments to the bare bones, your assertion is that group A can do something because they have a subjective comfort with it. However, they are not happy with group B doing exactly the same thing.
Which raises the question why group A are not happy with group B doing the exact same thing as group A. This (objectively) would be because there is some factor of group A that is perceived to make this ok. This is prejudicial against group B (in an objective, and provable sense).
In the case of "Words being ok to use by in group based on colour of skin, but not out group because (subjective things)", this is objectively discrimination based on colour of skin, which is objectively racism.
Now, it may be subjectively moral in group A to do this, but it isn't in most of group B. And objectively, it certainly isn't ethical.
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As you said, we don't know each other. It doesn't seem to me that you are engaging with the arguments I'm making, but rather the arguments you imagine I would be making if I subscribed to your moral philosophy or some other common philosophy. Or perhaps it's a common academic framework for analyzing morality. I am arguing in good faith, and I guess you are as well, but for this to go anywhere we would both need to try to understand one another a lot more than is possible in this forum. For instance, if we h
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But all that does is indicate whether offence will be taken, not whether the act is moral. Offence is not a moral concern - cannot be as being offended is a subjective emotional respo
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So, is the issue whether or not some speech is racist/sexist, or if people take offence? If it is the former, then it is wrong for everyone or right for everyone. If the latter, it is irrelevant.
I can't fathom your separation of right/wrong from the harm that is done (or the expected harm that's probably done). I know it's in fashion for people to be highly offended and it does make sense for us to ignore it most of the time, but in the end the ways we consider okay to treat people still does depend on whether it hurts or helps them. But I am not a deontologist and may not ever see eye to eye with people that think morality is a clear set of rules.
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I agree with you almost completely. However that is no justification for impoliteness. (There might be other justifications, depending on the situation.)
You are saying the harm from words is a mental construct rather than anything intrinsic, correct? That also applies to practically every other kind of harm. At risk of sounding insensitive, a nasty divorce is only as harmful as the words playing and replaying in your head. The same can be said for most other types of suffering. It is good to reduce sufferin
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To get to the point where skin colour doesn't matter you have to do more than say "skin colour doesn't matter any more".
For example it may be illegal to reject job candidates because they are of one particular race, but since you can't know what is going on inside someone's head when they are sifting through CVs and throwing all the people with certain names or from certain places in the trash, so just making it illegal doesn't fix the problem. It certainly doesn't make sure schools in predominantly black a
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Acceptable or not doesn't depend on race but rather on the harm the comment would do. In the present climate, that amount of harm depends on racial dynamics including characteristics of the audience and the speaker. I hope we reach a future in which race does not need to be part of moral calculations, but sadly we will not reach that point in my lifetime.
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They are just words. "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Words can only cause as much harm as the listener allows. Let's not try to justify racial discrimination by infantilizing people of color - assuming they are so fragile that they can be shattered by nothing more than words.
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So you're saying it's perfectly fine if an immigrant from India uses the N word?
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If it's not OK for white people to use then its not OK for blacks either. Different rules for different groups - especially groups based on skin color - are wrong.
It's insane to me that this has to be explained, yet here we are.
Rules tend to have to be objective, logical, discrete. I guess that's why law gets so complex — trying to follow all the nuanced rules to handle all the complexities of real life.
And one of the difficulties with speech is that meaning is entirely a matter of context. Language just doesn't work at all, otherwise.
Then there's also the problem that people have different views on the whole thing. Some say that if they feel offended, then the law should protect them, whilst others say that feeling offended
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Do you genuinely wish to be telling other people what labels, especially racial, ethnic, religious, or gender they may wish to use for themselves?
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You can't erase history either.
It's not a rule anyway, it all depends on context. Black people will get into trouble using it in the wrong context too, and there are situations where non-blacks can say it without issue too, e.g. Bill's comment above.
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Always start with "injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere".
Currently, the injustice is clearly the oppression that word represents.
Maybe, at some point in the future, we will have moved on from that injustice. And we can address the (very minor) injustice of white people not being able to use that word.
You can do one at a time, it's fine. Relax.
Re: So isn't that a good thing? (Score:2)
It's not ok that brown or black people call themselves Swedes either. Or that media do it.
Re: So isn't that a good thing? (Score:1)
It is if they're Swedish.
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>"Blacks call each other "nigga" all the time, but that doesn't mean it's okay for white people to use the word."
And why do you think that is so? Is it OK to use the word half as often if you are 1/2 Black or a quarter as often if you are 1/4 Black? What if you were White but adopted and raised in a Black family?
Either it is a forbidden word or it is not.
I think setting multiple standards is just as bad as intentional bias.
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Seems to be what intersectional politics is all about. There is always a reason why rules do not apply to one individual because of {factor}, so there need to be a number of variations of every rule to match the number of people in the world.
Which is another way of saying "I want to make up rules that can target people I don't like, and they can't have the benefit of the good stuff I have because they don't have an attribute my friends and I have". Because I'm an adherent of this brand of politics and you
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You also don't solve racism by being naively color-blind and refusing to see race. This also refused to acknowledge that historic injustice against a race have not been resolved yet, because doing so would require acknowledging race (never mind the expense). They refuse to acknowledge that systemic racism is occurring because that would require acknowledging race.
It's all about maintaining the status quo. And coming up with justifications, like not being able to make black more equal by raising their soci
Re: So isn't that a good thing? (Score:2)
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They do correlate to income and poverty. And that does correlate to crime. A community with less access to quality education or jobs ends up in a spiral of poverty. You personally may not be racist or sexist, but there are indeed employers who are that way.
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Correlation and causation are getting mixed up here. Policies that drive away jobs are often paired directly related to those that drive down the quality of education. When you drive away jobs you drive away parents that are engaged and care about the quality of the community and the education of the kids. Those parent leave and the parents that stay behind are typically those that cannot readily leave.
After a while you end up with a situation where crime rises and thug culture takes over. Kids are discoura
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There's a history being ignored here. Maybe today everyone is pure with no hint of racism, it's been wiped off the face of the planet somehow. But in history this was not true. Starting with emancipation, former slaves were not treated as equals, not given land or jobs, and laws were soon passed in the south creating a two tier system with blacks as second class citizens. In the north this was not official, but it still happened. Cities formed with black neighborhoods being far more in poverty than poor
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The argument keeps being made that racism is systemic and is not eradicated. In a country that Elected Obama and then re-elected him that certainly strikes as inherently illogical.
What systems are these blacks living in that they are suffering all of this racism? They are living in cities that have in some cases been controlled by liberal policies for generations (Chicago, Baltimore and so on). From the schools to the cities and the counties these establishments are all solidly under liberal control. In man
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Blacks as a race do not have a lower "social standing".
The poor, as a collective group containing multiple races have a lower social standing.
More blacks belong to the "poor" collective group as a percentage of the total black population.
If you are poor, irrespective of race, it is extremely hard to raise your position due to various factors not related to race.
The historical injustice you refer to is the reason many blacks started out poor, but the difficulty of escaping the trap of poverty is the reason t
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Things fall into self-reinforcing cycles. They need to get interrupted or they will continue. That takes taking into account the existing racist cycles.
And once again (Score:1, Insightful)
Just like with the national murder rate, black people break the laws more than average, and Concerned Saintly White Liberals (TM) are angry at the people who enforce the rules instead of the ones who keep breaking them. Just like how the mayors of Seattle and Chicago are mock outraged (in front of cameras of course) that Trump would send in troops to stop violence and rioting but totally unconcerned about all the shootings and burnings and tens of millions in property damage in their own cities.
Notice that
How is it racial bias? (Score:2)
With all the free passes for hate and bad behavior some groups including black get how likely isn't it they behave much worse just as they do with murder?
There's nothing which say that an unbiased system wouldn't react more on black people's posts.
It may just have been fair and some cry baby isn't liking it because it reveals the truth.
NOTHING say that such and such group have to have the same outcome. They may not be and act the same.
Complete BS. Didn't read the rest.
The scientific approach (Score:2)
Black[s] were about 50 percent more likely under the new rules to have their accounts automatically disabled by the moderation system than [Whites]
OK, that is a worrying statistic. Why are certain demographics more likely to be flagged? If you don't know, the scientific approach is to try to figure that out.
Re: The scientific approach (Score:3)
It's because technology is racist. Just like that traffic camera studies which found that black people are more likely to not wear seatbelts. It's not that they're more likely to not wear seatbelts because of a toxic culture that encourages rulebreaking, it's because the traffic cameras edited their own video to make it look like black people wear seatbelts less than white people.
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The main concern, at least from what the article wrote, is that hate against white people is treated the same as black people:
In an effort to be neutral, the company’s hate speech policies treat attacks on white people or men in exactly the same way as it treats comments about Black people or women, an approach that employees said does not take into account the historical context of racism and oppression.
“The world treats Black people differently from white people,” one employee said. “If we are treating everyone the same way, we are already making choices on the wrong side of history.”
Basically, certain people feel that racist posts should be moderated differently, that racism against whites should not be treated the same as racism against blacks, which in itself is super fucking racist.
Um, isn't that racist? (Score:3)
Isn't that racist? Assuming people are a certain race based on their activities? I mean, how would you react if I were to say someone is probably black because they like eating watermelon and fried chicken?
Not to mention it's hypocritical to use that methodology to make this criticism. You're using activity to infer people's race, to criticize as racist an algorithm which removes accounts based on... activity.
Completely agreed.
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It is racist. Facebook shouldn't include race in profiles at all, or gender, and certainly should not use those data points to make decisions.
Complaining about them doing this is not racist.
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Possibly prejudiced. Possibly stereotypical. But nothing in that line actually implies racism. It can also be a statistical characteristic and thus not prejudiced either.
May I guess? (Score:2)
They were banned for using racist language. But, as the late George Carlin already said, "We don't care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy say n..... — why?!? Because we know they're are not racist. They're n.....s!”
Ok... (Score:2)
Re:Ok... (Score:4, Informative)
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It is reported that... (Score:3)
Reports received indicate Facebook has had some of its engineers use some extremely racist coding on its hardware. They use devices encoded with the RMA resistor color code which uses colors to indicate part values. 10 main colors encode decimal values. 1 is brown (our Hispanic brethren), 2 is red (American Indians of course), 4 is yellow (our Asians), 5 is green (olive complexions of Mediterraneans), and so on. But worst of all Black is a great big 0 and white is the highest value of all, 9.
When called about this Facebook representatives withheld comment.
{O,o}
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There's a real equality problem, but not the one (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't fix inequality with more inequality. You don't fight racism with more racism.
Historical context changes absolutely nothing about this. Attacking white people on the basis of their skin color is every bit as racist as attacking black people for their skin color. If you are going to block racist comments targeting one group you have to block those targeting every other group, or all you're doing is compounding the problem. And as astonishing as it is, Facebook seems to be handling that in exactly the right way.
The article goes on to try and justify allowing anti-white or anti-male hate speech because people don't find it as offensive. Well, that's just a load of bull. For one, I thought the problem was "hate speech", not whether or not someone was offended by it. Second, this is coming out of the same line of reasoning that created "cancel culture" - people losing their damn minds over any perceived offence and demanding the source be annihilated as if being offended was anyone else's problem - so to claim that one kind of hate speech is okay because it is less offensive than another is ridiculously inconsistent. So inconsistent that it discredits the entire offended/outraged-cancel-culture movement; which, if sincere, would be just as outraged by this as anything else.
Finally, racism is racism, sexism is sexism, and if any form of either is bad, then every form is equally bad.
If you want everyone to be treated equally, the first step is to treat everyone equally. For once, Facebook seems to be on the side of the angels.
Re: (Score:2)
It borders on the ridiculous that these people will promote racism with a straight face. Do things like slavery and Jim Crow laws still have effects on black people today? Sure. That doesn't mean that black people should have certain rights or should be special entitlements, least which being being able to act racist. We can have a whole conversation about reparations, but that doesn't include having rights or entitlements to be able to be racist.
Totally, there's a disproportion. These days, it's very hip
Re: (Score:2)
FFS, here we go again. (Score:1)
Holy Shit (Score:2)
So I read the article to see if it went into any details on what exactly was being moderated. It's the sadly typical "racism against white people isn't as bad as racism against black people" bullshit:
In an effort to be neutral, the company’s hate speech policies treat attacks on white people or men in exactly the same way as it treats comments about Black people or women, an approach that employees said does not take into account the historical context of racism and oppression.
“The world treats Black people differently from white people,” one employee said. “If we are treating everyone the same way, we are already making choices on the wrong side of history.”
So yes! Those profiles are getting moderated because of hate speech! That we have people that want to treat racism towards different groups differently...it's staggering. Wrong side of history? They're the ones being racist!
Fucking amazing. I'm glad that FB is sticking to actual equal stances. Score one for Z