Facebook responds to the testimony of Frances Haugen and the recent Wall Street Journal leak by attempting to shift the topic to hate speech. Guy Rosen published a defense of the social network’s anti-hate measures, where he argued that the diminished visibility of hate speech is more important than the presence of that content. Rosen said the “prevalence” (aka visibility) of hate on Facebook has dropped nearly 50 percent over the past three quarters to 0.05 percent of content viewed, or about five views per 10,000.
The admin thinks it’s “wrong” to focus on content removal as the sole metric. Rosen said there are other ways to counter hate and that Facebook needs to be “confident” before removing any material. This means being careful to avoid accidentally removing content and limiting access to people, groups, and pages that would potentially break the rules.
It is not possible to say that Rosen is completely wrong on this issue. Facebook has occasional problems because it mistakenly flags content as hate speech, and an aggressive removal system can cause these errors to escalate. Likewise, if very few people see a particular post, the hate will only have a limited effect.
However, it is clear that Facebook is trying to draw attention to another point. In his testimony, Haugen claimed that Facebook was only able to capture “a very small minority” of offensive material. If true, even if only a small percentage of users see the material, it’s still a problem. The Journal’s leaked documents said Facebook only removed a “low single-digit” percentage of content and had trouble consistently detecting first-person footage or racist tirades.
Rosen’s response also does not address Haugen’s claims that Facebook is resisting other efforts to implement safer algorithms and minimize hateful and divisive interactions. Facebook may be making significant strides in limiting hate, but that’s not the point made by Haugen or other critics. The highlighted issue is that the social media firm is not doing enough. . .
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