According to a whistleblower complaint, despite being aware that “RSS users, groups, and pages promote fear-mongering, anti-Muslim narratives”, social media giant Facebook could not take action or flag this content, given its “lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers.”
The complaint that Facebook’s language capabilities are “inadequate” and lead to “global misinformation and ethnic violence” is one of the many flagged by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Facebook’s practices.
Citing an undated internal Facebook document titled “Adversarial Harmful Networks-India Case study”, the complaint sent to US SEC by non-profit legal organisation Whistleblower Aid on behalf of Haugen notes, “There were a number of dehumanizing posts (on) Muslims… Our lack of Hindu and Bengali classifiers means much of this content is never flagged or actioned, and we have yet to put forth a nomination for designation of this group (RSS) given political sensitivities.”
Classifiers refer to Facebook’s hate-speech detection algorithms. According to Facebook, it added hate speech classifiers in Hindi starting early 2020 and introduced Bengali later that year. Classifiers for violence and incitement in Hindi and Bengali first came online in early 2021.
Eight documents containing scores of complaints by Haugen were uploaded by American news network CBS News. Haugen revealed her identity for the first time Monday in an interview with the news network.
In response to a detailed questionnaire sent by The Indian Express, a Facebook spokesperson said: “We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in technology that proactively detects hate speech, even before people report it to us. We now use this technology to proactively detect violating content in Hindi and Bengali, alongside over 40 languages globally”.
(Inputs The Indian Express)