Suffice it to say that Facebook does not have much of a reputation for being a bastion of progressive values when you consider the fact that the company has quite often run hate speech on its platform. In fact, a recent whistleblower claimed that Facebook might in fact be trying to boost hate speech and other divisive content because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up increasing engagement and that is precisely what is algorithm has been engineered to do for a lot of different reasons.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that another report has made an even more startling revelation. This report comes from the Washington Post, and it reveals that researchers had Facebook had implored top level management to allow them to make changes to the platform that would help prevent hate speech from being as prevalent as it currently is. While it would not have removed hate speech entirely, it would have at the very least removed some of the worst instances of it and preventing it from having as much of an impact on the platform and the people that use it.
That might have been a quick fix for Facebook, but apparently these top level executives were afraid of angering conservative partners in the company and rejected the proposal. Many have wondered where Facebook’s often rather conservative slant tends to come from, and this should end up making matters a lot clearer from quite a few different perspectives if you think about it.
While there might be claims of biases, this proposal was based on an internal survey of 10,000 Facebook users and White conservative were a part of the survey as well. The researchers realized after the survey that discriminatory and prejudiced language that was used against white people ended up getting cracked down on a lot more often than if it had been directed against people of color, even though the latter group tends to receive a lot more abuse than the former.
There are a lot of things wrong with Facebook, but this is perhaps one of the most damning things that anyone could ever have ended up learning about the platform and it indicates that many of Facebook’s problems are structural and are far too ingrained to be remedied easily.
Read next: Ex-Employee at Facebook States that Meta’s End to End Encryption Plan Will Lead to the Community Being Further Endangered
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that another report has made an even more startling revelation. This report comes from the Washington Post, and it reveals that researchers had Facebook had implored top level management to allow them to make changes to the platform that would help prevent hate speech from being as prevalent as it currently is. While it would not have removed hate speech entirely, it would have at the very least removed some of the worst instances of it and preventing it from having as much of an impact on the platform and the people that use it.
That might have been a quick fix for Facebook, but apparently these top level executives were afraid of angering conservative partners in the company and rejected the proposal. Many have wondered where Facebook’s often rather conservative slant tends to come from, and this should end up making matters a lot clearer from quite a few different perspectives if you think about it.
While there might be claims of biases, this proposal was based on an internal survey of 10,000 Facebook users and White conservative were a part of the survey as well. The researchers realized after the survey that discriminatory and prejudiced language that was used against white people ended up getting cracked down on a lot more often than if it had been directed against people of color, even though the latter group tends to receive a lot more abuse than the former.
There are a lot of things wrong with Facebook, but this is perhaps one of the most damning things that anyone could ever have ended up learning about the platform and it indicates that many of Facebook’s problems are structural and are far too ingrained to be remedied easily.
Read next: Ex-Employee at Facebook States that Meta’s End to End Encryption Plan Will Lead to the Community Being Further Endangered