Facebook's leaked rules on censoring hate speech protect 'white men' but not 'black children' (FB)

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June 28, 2017 6:06 PM

A bombshell investigation by ProPublica sheds new light on how Facebook trains its thousands of content moderators to police hate speech.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

A bombshell investigation by ProPublica published Wednesday sheds light on how Facebook trains its thousands of content moderators to police hate speech, including a leaked training slide that suggests they "protect" "white men" but not "black children."

The report, which includes internal training documents used by Facebook moderators, details how the social network's policies on hate speech "tend to favor elites and governments over grassroots activists and racial minorities."

Here are the highlights:

personally intervened

When asked for comment on ProPublica's report, a Facebook representative directed Business Insider to a post on Facebook's company blog about moderating hate speech that was published on Tuesday. In the post, Richard Allan, a VP of public policy, said Facebook deleted 66,000 hate-speech posts per week over the past two months.

"But it's clear we're not perfect when it comes to enforcing our policy," he wrote. "Often there are close calls — and too often we get it wrong."

You can read ProPublica's full investigation on its website. The report comes after The Guardian detailed Facebook's rules on moderating sex and violence last month.

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