Facebook’s supervisory authority orders restoration of post
When it comes to Facebook, tempers tend to overflow. No wonder that the group behind the network of the same name has sparked some major controversies over the past decade. There was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the 2016 election rigging in the United States, and the inciting violence against the Rohingya.
In order to solve some of the company’s major problems a little more impartially, the group officially created a supervisory authority in October that is supposed to have the last word on major decisions. The first decisions of this supervisory body are now visible, in one case it has now ruled against the decision of the networker.
Specifically, it is about the contribution of a user from Myanmar, who denounced the Chinese government and its politics in the local language. Since Burmese is not based on Latin letters, moderators of the network mixed up a lot and the context of the comment was not entirely clear. Because the user has criticized the Chinese state, not, as the moderators assumed, against the population.
Since this was based on the statement “fucking Chinese”, the posting was classified as level 2 hate speech and deleted. The user filed an objection, now Facebook’s supervisory authority has decided that the deletion process must be reversed. Proof that user criticism is given more weight by the independent body.
Facebook generally has a problem on the platform in this regard. Since the network is available in dozens of languages, the moderation team cannot master all of them. And when it comes to machine translation in particular, misunderstandings can quickly arise, after all, the AI does not understand the context.
Own opinion:
Scandal here, problem there. Facebook is grappling with massive problems. One reason is that content is often covered by freedom of expression, usually the group. It will be exciting to see whether Facebook can solve its structural problems or whether there will just be more problems in the future.
Via The Verge
