According to reports that has emerged in recent times, Facebook has asked its staff to stop looking for racial bias-ness in the range of products that the company offers - especially after when the company found Instagram moderation tool banning the Black users disproportionately.
The suspicious practice was first revealed by current and former employers in front of the NBC News when the outlet played the headlines of how Facebook’s internal research team, back in 2019, had spotted an automated content moderation tool operating inside Instagram which was likely to ban black people 50% more than that of white ones.
However, as soon as the team reported their findings to the senior management, Facebook immediately ordered the researchers to stop exploring the possible racial tool.
Instagram later did come up with a different version of the automated content moderation tool but as researchers were barred from checking out the racial bais-ness, no one still knew what the new version had.
When Facebook was asked about the incident, the company denied the allegation saying that no one stopped the researchers from investigating instead the company didn’t want researchers to discover the tool’s racial disparities with flawed methodology. Furthermore, the executives said that even to date Facebook is working hard on testing its product for racial bias-ness every now and then.
In fact, Facebook spokeswoman Carolyn Glanville in a statement also said that the company has partnered up with other concerned organizations in order to actively investigate on how how to measure and analyze the company’s products along the lines of race and ethnicity with full responsibility.
Overall, Facebook has always struggled to keep the content moderation policies balanced when it comes to the matter of posts pinpointing demographics like men and white people when compared to the ones that criticize oppressed groups. But now with new reports coming up, the company will have to work more on increasing scrutiny for dealing with issues that are related to hate speech and racial bias.
Apart from this Facebook has always aimed to improve the racial and gender diversity in its staff and in the report published last month, it seems like that the company is making it possible with more inclusions in certain segments of the company but not in technical or top management roles - which then raises the concerns again.
A few days ago, Facebook also confirmed to build an internal team to identify potential racial bias in their products available on the internet.
Read next: Instagram Users Can Now Create Personal Fundraisers through the App
The suspicious practice was first revealed by current and former employers in front of the NBC News when the outlet played the headlines of how Facebook’s internal research team, back in 2019, had spotted an automated content moderation tool operating inside Instagram which was likely to ban black people 50% more than that of white ones.
However, as soon as the team reported their findings to the senior management, Facebook immediately ordered the researchers to stop exploring the possible racial tool.
Instagram later did come up with a different version of the automated content moderation tool but as researchers were barred from checking out the racial bais-ness, no one still knew what the new version had.
When Facebook was asked about the incident, the company denied the allegation saying that no one stopped the researchers from investigating instead the company didn’t want researchers to discover the tool’s racial disparities with flawed methodology. Furthermore, the executives said that even to date Facebook is working hard on testing its product for racial bias-ness every now and then.
In fact, Facebook spokeswoman Carolyn Glanville in a statement also said that the company has partnered up with other concerned organizations in order to actively investigate on how how to measure and analyze the company’s products along the lines of race and ethnicity with full responsibility.
Overall, Facebook has always struggled to keep the content moderation policies balanced when it comes to the matter of posts pinpointing demographics like men and white people when compared to the ones that criticize oppressed groups. But now with new reports coming up, the company will have to work more on increasing scrutiny for dealing with issues that are related to hate speech and racial bias.
Apart from this Facebook has always aimed to improve the racial and gender diversity in its staff and in the report published last month, it seems like that the company is making it possible with more inclusions in certain segments of the company but not in technical or top management roles - which then raises the concerns again.
A few days ago, Facebook also confirmed to build an internal team to identify potential racial bias in their products available on the internet.
Read next: Instagram Users Can Now Create Personal Fundraisers through the App
