Is Facebook profiting off hate? It’s complicated.
THE POST'S VIEW
By the Editorial Board
August 22, 2022
A new report alleges that Facebook is profiting off white supremacy. The reality is a little more complicated.
The Post revealed this month the findings of a Tech Transparency Project investigation revealing flaws in Facebook’s efforts to fight domestic extremism on its platform. The company promised, after a civil rights audit critical of its approach to racial justice, that it had banned organized hate groups. Yet the investigation discovered that more than 80 of what the researchers define as white supremacist groups have a presence on its site. The report’s chief concern is the monetization of searches for some of these groups: If a user looked up “Universal Aryan Brotherhood,” for instance, a Rolling Stone ad may surface, the study said. That meant that Facebook was making money off someone poking around its site for hateful content. In other cases, the worry was about safety: If a user looked up “Ku Klux Klan,” an ad for a Black church might show up, of particular concern in an age of racially motivated mass shootings.
Facebook fixed this problem after the investigation concluded, and is in the process of addressing another issue in which Facebook automatically generated pages for some white supremacist groups when users listed those groups as their jobs, interests or businesses. The firm points out that the results of the accidentally monetized searches didn’t actually contain pages run by the KKK or other hate groups; in many cases, they contained pages run by anti-hate groups. It also argues that its internal list of white supremacist organizations differs from the list on which the researchers based their results. All this is true, and it’s true that domestic extremists, terrorists, foreign influencers and other malign actors are becoming savvier every day — forcing platforms to play a never-ending game of whack-a-mole
The errors documented in the Tech Transparency Project report don’t indicate that Facebook is intentionally letting white supremacism slide so much as Facebook is trying to fight white supremacism on its platform — but that it is too often failing. It’s impossible to avoid all mistakes when trying to purge a service of prohibited content. But that means it’s all the more important not to make avoidable mistakes. These revelations show that Facebook still has work to do in that regard. They also show, however, that white supremacism is so vexing a scourge that even a company pouring ample resources into the area can’t scrub it out. Meanwhile, myriad less mainstream sites aren’t even trying — and as long as hate is this prevalent off of the internet, it’s bound be prevalent on the internet, too. This is a problem that can’t possibly be fixed in Menlo Park alone.
August 22, 2022
A new report alleges that Facebook is profiting off white supremacy. The reality is a little more complicated.
The Post revealed this month the findings of a Tech Transparency Project investigation revealing flaws in Facebook’s efforts to fight domestic extremism on its platform. The company promised, after a civil rights audit critical of its approach to racial justice, that it had banned organized hate groups. Yet the investigation discovered that more than 80 of what the researchers define as white supremacist groups have a presence on its site. The report’s chief concern is the monetization of searches for some of these groups: If a user looked up “Universal Aryan Brotherhood,” for instance, a Rolling Stone ad may surface, the study said. That meant that Facebook was making money off someone poking around its site for hateful content. In other cases, the worry was about safety: If a user looked up “Ku Klux Klan,” an ad for a Black church might show up, of particular concern in an age of racially motivated mass shootings.
Facebook fixed this problem after the investigation concluded, and is in the process of addressing another issue in which Facebook automatically generated pages for some white supremacist groups when users listed those groups as their jobs, interests or businesses. The firm points out that the results of the accidentally monetized searches didn’t actually contain pages run by the KKK or other hate groups; in many cases, they contained pages run by anti-hate groups. It also argues that its internal list of white supremacist organizations differs from the list on which the researchers based their results. All this is true, and it’s true that domestic extremists, terrorists, foreign influencers and other malign actors are becoming savvier every day — forcing platforms to play a never-ending game of whack-a-mole
The errors documented in the Tech Transparency Project report don’t indicate that Facebook is intentionally letting white supremacism slide so much as Facebook is trying to fight white supremacism on its platform — but that it is too often failing. It’s impossible to avoid all mistakes when trying to purge a service of prohibited content. But that means it’s all the more important not to make avoidable mistakes. These revelations show that Facebook still has work to do in that regard. They also show, however, that white supremacism is so vexing a scourge that even a company pouring ample resources into the area can’t scrub it out. Meanwhile, myriad less mainstream sites aren’t even trying — and as long as hate is this prevalent off of the internet, it’s bound be prevalent on the internet, too. This is a problem that can’t possibly be fixed in Menlo Park alone.
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