Facebook has offered an apology following an investigation, which exposed the moderators' inconsistencies in removing offensive or hateful posts reported by the users.
As reported by ProPublica, the investigation revealed that in one case Facebook censors, known as content reviewers, approved a picture of a corpse with the message "the only good muslim is a f...... dead one". However, another post that had the statement "death to the Muslims!!!" was removed. Clearly, it does not make any sense.
The US-based no-profit investigation newsroom found out that content reviewers at Facebook often give different verdict on items with similar content. What's more, most of the times, the content reviewers do not even abide by Facebook's guidelines.
The posts were submitted to ProPublica as part of a crowd-sourced investigation to look into how the social network giant implements its hate-speech rules. ProPublica also asked Facebook to explain on what basis the content reviewers take their decision, and also gave 49 samples.
People who submitted these samples complained that Facebook censors had erred as they failed to remove hate speech and offensive content most of the times. On the flip side, they sometimes ended up deleting legitimate expression.
Facebook admitted that its reviewers had indeed made a mistake in 22 cases. However, the company defended its decision in 19 cases.
In 6 instances, Facebook said that the users had not flagged the content correctly, or the author had deleted it. For the remaining two cases, the social media platform said it did not have enough information to respond.
"We're sorry for the mistakes we have made... They do not reflect the community we want to help build," Facebook Vice President Justin Osofsky was quoted as saying.
"We must do better," he added further.
Justin Osofsky also said that Facebook will double the size of its safety and security team in 2018 by hiring more content reviewers as well as other employees.
