Slashdot: Facebook's Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children

Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children
Published on June 28, 2017 at 05:20PM
Sidney Fussell from Gizmodo summarizes a report from ProPublica, which brings to light dozens of training documents used by Facebook to train moderators on hate speech: As the trove of slides and quizzes reveals, Facebook uses a warped, one-sided reasoning to balance policing hate speech against users’ freedom of expression on the platform. This is perhaps best summarized by the above image from one of its training slideshows, wherein Facebook instructs moderators to protect “White Men,” but not “Female Drivers” or “Black Children.” Facebook only blocks inflammatory remarks if they’re used against members of a “protected class.” But Facebook itself decides who makes up a protected class, with lots of clear opportunities for moderation to be applied arbitrarily at best and against minoritized people critiquing those in power (particularly white men) at worst —
as Facebook has been routinely accused of. According to the leaked documents, here are the group identifiers Facebook protects: Sex, Religious affiliation, National origin, Gender identity, Race, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Serious disability or disease. And here are those Facebook won’t protect: Social class, continental origin, appearance, age, occupation, political ideology, religions, countries. Subsets of groups — female drivers, Jewish professors, gay liberals — aren’t protected either, as ProPublica explains: White men are considered a group because both traits are protected, while female drivers and black children, like radicalized Muslims, are subsets, because one of their characteristics is not protected.