

"We should have software that is human-scaled, where humans have conversations together, not computers facilitating who we get to hear from," Haugen said during the hearing.įacebook's algorithms can sometimes have trouble determining what is hate speech and what is violence, leading to harmful videos and posts being left on the platform for too long. Because Facebook uses algorithms to decide what content to show its users, the content that is most engaged with and that Facebook subsequently tries to push to its users is usually angry, divisive, sensationalistic posts that contain misinformation, Haugen said. The latest findings in the Journal also come after former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen met with Congress last week to discuss how the social media platform relied too heavily on AI and algorithms.


Facebook's report from February of this year claimed that this detection rate was above 97%. Facebook stands by its claim that most of the hate speech and violent content on the platform gets taken down by its "super-efficient" AI before users even see it. The company has called the reports "mischaracterizations."įacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he believed Facebook's AI would be able to take down "the vast majority of problematic content" before 2020, according to the Journal. The Journal's Sunday report was the latest chapter in its "Facebook Files" that found the company turns a blind eye to its impact on everything from the mental health of young girls using Instagram to misinformation, human trafficking, and gang violence on the site. Another group of Facebook employees came to a similar conclusion, saying that Facebook's AI only removed posts that generated 3% to 5% of hate speech on the platform and 0.6% of content that violated Facebook's rules on violence.

It often indicates a user profile.įacebook claims it uses artificial intelligence to identify and remove posts containing hate speech and violence, but the technology doesn't really work, according to internal documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.įacebook senior engineers say that the company's automated system only removed posts that generated just 2% of the hate speech viewed on the platform that violated its rules, the Journal reported on Sunday. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
