Facebook Apologises After Channel 4 Investigation Found Disturbing Content
On Tuesday 17th July, Channel 4 aired its undercover investigation into the large social media platform, Facebook. The undercover reporter goes to work as a Content Moderator in Facebook’s largest centre, based in Dublin.
Viewers were able to see footage of how the Content Moderators were trained and the steps that are to be taken for topics such as racism, bullying, child abuse and graphic content.
Viewers were left distraught after discovering that many extreme videos and/or photos were left on the site – and not by accident. Moderators were told to leave the distressing videos on the site for ‘awareness’ purposes. One moderator tells the reporter: “If you start censoring too much, then people lose interest in the platform”.
“It’s all about making money at the end of the day.”
One that upset the public, in particular, was a racist ‘meme’. Moderators were told to put their views and opinions aside and to abide by Facebook guidelines at all times.
Dispatches reveals the racist meme that Facebook moderators used as an example of acceptable content to leave on their platform.
Facebook have removed the content since Channel 4’s revelations.
Warning: distressing content. pic.twitter.com/riVka6LcPS— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) July 17, 2018
Protected pages
It also came into light that pages with a large number of followers were ‘protected’ more than others. This included far-right pages such as Britain First and Tommy Robinson, despite them receiving over the allowed number of reported content that went against the guidelines.
Child abuse is allowed on the platform
It was also discovered that a video, which has been surfacing since 2012, featuring a boy of around 2-3 being physically abused was allowed to stay live on the platform even though it had received many requests for it to be taken down.
— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) July 17, 2018
Featured in the documentary was the Facebook Vice President of Global Policy, apologising for the content that can be found on the platform.
Watch tonight @Channel4 9pm. Facebook Vice President of Global Policy apologises following @Dispatches undercover investigation into graphic content being published to the social network. pic.twitter.com/TjkItPDrbE
— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) July 17, 2018
“You have clearly shown in the film, that there are instances where we have failed to meet the high standards that have been set for ourselves and the expectations of the people who use our service.” stated Lord Richard Allan, Facebook Vice President of Global Policy.
“You have identified some areas where we’ve failed and I’m here today to apologise for those failings”.
Since the investigation, Facebook has stated that the staff involved have been ‘retrained’.
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