Out Lesbians? Out Of Facebook, Apparently

[The Irreverent Mr Black]

Facebook community standards under scrutiny as out and proud 'dykes' banned

Secret guidelines used by social media giant Facebook to censor hate speech are resulting in lesbians being blocked and banned for referring to themselves as "dykes", with one expert suggesting early adoption of artificial intelligence software may be to blame.

Liz Waterhouse, who runs the blog listening2lesbians with her partner Lisa Mallett, said they noticed women started being banned this year, with a sharp escalation in June.

Ms Waterhouse herself has been blocked a number of times for using the term in pro-lesbian ways, and fears she may soon be banned altogether.

She is worried the social media giant's actions will result in vulnerable minority communities being silenced online.

More at linky

[wolty]

FFS.

[pipbarber]

Despite my utter indifference to, and non use of, fb surely this is a simple algorithm fix? I doubt!fb gives a shit about a single thing beyond getting 7 billion people to spend more time on the platform. I'm sure they'll fix it, probably tomorrow...morning.

[Stub King]

I am surprised this came about with 'dykes'. would have thought 'nigger' would have triggered it first. that's the problem with looking at words out of context.

[The Irreverent Mr Black]

@StubKing: Those who use that word to describe themselves spell it differently. Perhaps it doesn't trigga the algorithm.

The tendency does seem to be that Farcebook primarily protects white guys.

[TokenSkeptic]

Greta Christina, who'll be at the GAC, got banned that way!

[The Irreverent Mr Black]

@StubKing: Those who use that word to describe themselves spell it differently. Perhaps it doesn't trigga the algorithm.

The tendency does seem to be that Farcebook primarily protects white guys.

And it seems that some types of racism are given a free pass.

Facebook let advertisers target users via antisemitic terms like 'Jew hater'

Facebook has allowed advertising to target users interested in the topics of “Jew hater” and “How to burn Jews”, according to an investigation that adds to mounting criticisms of the way the company allows and profits from unethical ads.

ProPublica, an investigative news organization, reported on Thursday that the social network’s self-service ad-buying system allowed people to direct advertisements to nearly 2,300 users interested in several explicitly antisemitic subjects, including a category labeled “History of ‘why Jews ruin the world’”.

The journalists tested the legitimacy of the ad categories by paying $30 to target “promoted posts” to those specific groups. ProPublica said three ads were approved within 15 minutes. Facebook later took down the offensive categories after ProPublica contacted the company for comment.

Facebook says likely Russia-based group paid for political ads during US election
Read more
Asked about ProPublica’s findings, Rob Leathern, product management director at Facebook, confirmed in a statement to the Guardian that it had “removed the associated targeting fields”, adding, “We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.”

A Facebook algorithm had created the antisemitic categories, and the company said it is considering changes to prevent this kind of problem.

The embarrassing findings have come at a time when Facebook is facing widespread scrutiny for its ad practices. Earlier this month, Facebook disclosed that a group that appeared to be based in Russia had spent $100,000 on ads promoting political messages in a two-year period. The ads had spread divisive views on topics such as immigration, race and LGBT rights and had promoted 470 “inauthentic” pages and accounts later suspended by Facebook, according to the company.