The New York Times recently released a report that revealed that Facebook’s moderation policies relied on outdated documentation, as well as the fact that the engineers that Facebook had hired to moderate all of the posts on the site were thoroughly overworked and usually didn’t have time to give each post more than a glance. This has made it clear to a lot of people that Facebook’s content moderation is more or less perfunctory, an attempt to save face after a bad year rather than being a genuine attempt to make the platform better for people.
Facebook has responded to this report by releasing a statement, but people are quite surprised by the response that the social media platform has given. Facebook stated that there was no quota that content moderators had to meet which was supposedly not giving them enough time to check each post.
Photo: Toby Melville / Reuters
Facebook has responded to this report by releasing a statement, but people are quite surprised by the response that the social media platform has given. Facebook stated that there was no quota that content moderators had to meet which was supposedly not giving them enough time to check each post.
"The team responsible for safety on Facebook is made up of around 30,000 people, about 15,000 of whom are content reviewers around the world.", said Facebook in a blog post.According to Facebook, the compensation these moderators received was not impacted by quantity. Another aspect of the report was also addressed, the part that claimed that content moderators used Google Translate to see if posts in languages other than English were in line with the social network's content moderation policy. The internet monolith claimed that the moderators were provided with the necessary tools and training that would allow them to get the job done.
"We hire reviewers for their language expertise and cultural context — we review content in over 50 languages — and we encourage them to take the time they need to review reports. They work in more than 20 sites around the world, which resemble Facebook’s own offices, and they provide 24/7 support.", explained Facebook.Basically, Facebook is thoroughly defending itself and categorically denying that it is attempting to get things done on the cheap, so to speak. The statement also included a part where Facebook claimed that they are more transparent than ever. Facebook has been defending itself left, right and center with a post by Mark Zuckerberg recently also stating that he was proud of the progress the company has made indicated a certain level of tone deafness within the management of the company.
Photo: Toby Melville / Reuters
