Facebook’s ‘Race-Blind Practices Around Hate Speech’ Came at ‘Expense of Black Users’

Newly discovered documents show how tech giant Facebook’s attempt at being neutral came at the expense of minorities and people of color. The Washington Post reports “Facebook’s race-blind practices around hate speech came at the expense of Black users.”

Researchers at Facebook proposed “a fix to the biased algorithm” when they showed company executives an example of the kind of hate speech that was circulating on the social media platform. “

The Washington Post article writes that an incident occurred in which an actual post featuring an image of four female Democratic lawmakers known collectively as “The Squad.” The Post reports:

The poster, whose name was scrubbed out for privacy, referred to the women, two of whom are Muslim, as “swami rag heads.” A comment from another person used even more vulgar language, referring to the four women of color as “black c—s,” according to internal company documents exclusively obtained by The Washington Post.

The post represented the “worst of the worst” language on Facebook — the majority of it directed at minority groups, according to a two-year effort by a large team working across the company, the document said. The researchers urged executives to adopt an aggressive overhaul of its software system that would primarily remove only those hateful posts before any Facebook users could see them.

But Facebook’s leaders balked at the plan. According to two people familiar with the internal debate, top executives including Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan feared the new system would tilt the scales by protecting some vulnerable groups over others. A policy executive prepared a document for Kaplan that raised the potential for backlash from “conservative partners,” according to the document. The people spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

The previously unreported debate is an example of how Facebook’s decisions in the name of being neutral and race-blind in fact come at the expense of minorities and particularly people of color. Far from protecting Black and other minority users, Facebook executives wound up instituting half-measures after the “worst of the worst” project that left minorities more likely to encounter derogatory and racist language on the site, the people said.