A more complete portrait of how Facebook was vividly aware of its harmful effects came to light Monday, both at Frances Haugen’s testimony in front of the British Parliament and via a series of reports based on internal documents she leaked, deemed “The Facebook Papers.” During the 2.5 hour question-and-answer, Haugen repeatedly said that Facebook puts “growth over safety,” particularly in developing areas of the world where the company does not have language or cultural expertise to regulate content without fostering division among users.
Here are the most explosive revelations from her Oct. 25 testimony and the internal documents.
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Facebook fails to moderate harmful content in developing countries
The documents, confirmed by multiple news outlets, reveal that problems with hate speech and disinformation are dramatically worse in the developing world, where content moderation is often weaker. In India, Facebook reportedly did not have enough resources or expertise in the country’s 22 officially recognized languages, leaving the company unable to grapple with a rise in anti-Muslim posts and fake accounts tied to the country’s ruling party and opposition figures. According to one document, 87% of Facebook’s global budget for time spent on classifying misinformation goes towards the United States, while 13% is set aside for the rest of the world — despite the fact that North American users make up just 10% of its daily users.
When a pair of Facebook researchers created a dummy account in 2019 to test how users in Kerala, India, experienced the social media site, they found a staggering amount of hate speech, misinformation and calls for violence on the platform. “I’ve seen more images of dead people in the past three weeks than I’ve seen in my entire life total,” the researcher wrote. With 340 million Facebook users, India is the company’s largest market.
The studies by Facebook employees reveal that the company moves into…
Source : time
