The topic of discussion Thursday morning for the CEO of Facebook was content moderation on the scheduled meeting to discuss misinformation that so easily and rapidly spreads online. Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, and the January 6 US Capitol siege was specifically highlighted throughout the hearing.
The CEO highlighted the fact that most of the content moderated online is done by the Facebook's artificial intelligence and not by the humans. According to the CEO, 95 percent of hate speech taken down from the application is done by AI and 97 to 98 percent of terrorist content is taken down by AI rather than people at the company and since the content is usually moderated by machines sometimes nuances of counter speech makes it difficult to assemble posts and therefore some posts that should be deleted are not.
If you are confused let us clear what nuances of counter speech means? The CEO said there are some hashtags that are used for both hateful rhetoric stuff while can be used in support of that too. On this the CEO gave an example by answering one question of Democratic congresswoman Doris Matsui of California who asked Zuckerberg about anti-Asian hashtags regarding the pandemic that appeared on social media platforms on which Zuckerberg said that sometimes the AI gets confused on similar hashtags as what is in favor and what is not and therefore a minor percentage of posts that are negative are left behind and not removed and therefore the company has to be clear about when someone is saying something because they're using it in a hateful way versus when they're denouncing it. But this does not mean that using AI as a means to moderate content is not a good way because it certainly helps in clearing out a lot of toxicity on the application and while a small amount is left behind the company is working towards improving it as well.
Other than this in the long hearing session a lot of different topics were covered apart from just content moderation. Some lawmakers also questioned the CEOs about the discrimination that takes place online and specially focused on the article about Joe Biden’s son by New York Times that was published last year and then blocked by Twitter.
However, the Facebook team assures the public that they are working towards making their platform a better and safer place every day and is also trying to combat misinformation on the application.
Read next: Facebook is introducing new tools for eCommerce field and for content creators to claim their stolen content
The CEO highlighted the fact that most of the content moderated online is done by the Facebook's artificial intelligence and not by the humans. According to the CEO, 95 percent of hate speech taken down from the application is done by AI and 97 to 98 percent of terrorist content is taken down by AI rather than people at the company and since the content is usually moderated by machines sometimes nuances of counter speech makes it difficult to assemble posts and therefore some posts that should be deleted are not.
If you are confused let us clear what nuances of counter speech means? The CEO said there are some hashtags that are used for both hateful rhetoric stuff while can be used in support of that too. On this the CEO gave an example by answering one question of Democratic congresswoman Doris Matsui of California who asked Zuckerberg about anti-Asian hashtags regarding the pandemic that appeared on social media platforms on which Zuckerberg said that sometimes the AI gets confused on similar hashtags as what is in favor and what is not and therefore a minor percentage of posts that are negative are left behind and not removed and therefore the company has to be clear about when someone is saying something because they're using it in a hateful way versus when they're denouncing it. But this does not mean that using AI as a means to moderate content is not a good way because it certainly helps in clearing out a lot of toxicity on the application and while a small amount is left behind the company is working towards improving it as well.
Other than this in the long hearing session a lot of different topics were covered apart from just content moderation. Some lawmakers also questioned the CEOs about the discrimination that takes place online and specially focused on the article about Joe Biden’s son by New York Times that was published last year and then blocked by Twitter.
However, the Facebook team assures the public that they are working towards making their platform a better and safer place every day and is also trying to combat misinformation on the application.
Read next: Facebook is introducing new tools for eCommerce field and for content creators to claim their stolen content
