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By Eric Lutz
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Earlier this summer, amid outrage at not acting when Donald Trump issued a racist risk of violence opposed to George Floyd protesters, Mark Zuckerberg promised painters he would paint to “promote racial justice.” “We will have to go so far to succeed over racial injustice in America and the world, and we all have a duty and an opportunity to replace that,” Facebook’s CEO wrote in June. “I think our platforms will play a positive role in this, however, we have paintings to make sure our role is as positive as possible.”
But there are reasons to doubt his sincerity. According to an NBC News report, Facebook’s racial challenge goes far beyond Zuckerberg’s generally passive technique of the president’s harmful and offensive messages. In 2019, Facebook studies found that Instagram users perceived as black were about 50% more likely to have their accounts disabled through moderators according to platform regulations than perceived as white. When researchers submitted their review to their superiors, they were told not to focus the effects and not to conduct additional studies on the moderation system. The reaction was exasperating, but not unusual; 8 existing and previous workers told NBC News that Facebook’s control routinely ignores or hides internal studies of racial bias on the platform. “This is not a new challenge,” a Facebook engineer wrote in an internal message post on a reviewed ad board through NBC News. “It’s been going on for years.”
“I’ve noticed that other people go crazy when leadership ignores them or shuts them down completely and commits us, over and over, to following the same path,” the engineer continued. According to NBC News, “Facebook did not deny that some investigators were told to avoid exploring racial bias, but it said so because the method was imperfect.” A Facebook spokesman said the company “actively seeks tactics to measure and analyze Internet products based on racial and ethnic criteria guilty and in partnership with other companies.”
Allegations of ignored and suppressed studies of racial prejudices in the company are emblematic of broader racial upheavals on Facebook, which is under increasing pressure from workers to take more meaningful action. After Trump issued a racist risk of shooting at protesters in Minneapolis in May, Twitter added a warning tag to the content. But Facebook, true to its custom, has not taken such steps, allowing the president’s warning that “when looting begins, the shooting begins” will remain on the platform. Facebook workers organized a virtual outing to protest and, in a tense video call, insisted on Zuckerberg about the “lack of transparency and lack of understanding of the outdoor global of their privilege.”
Facebook’s assembly founder defended the company and told workers that he did not believe Trump’s message was a “dog whistle” that sanctioned violence against protesters and protected his commitment to diversity. But an assembly with Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and other top Facebook executives left civil rights leaders frustrated, arguing that business leaders “showed no understanding” of the issues at stake. “Mark sets a very damaging precedent for other voices that would say similar things on Facebook,” Vanita Gupta, Sherrilyn Ifill and Rashad Robinson said in a joint meeting with Facebook executives.
Facebook is no stranger to such criticism, however, it may never have known the extent of the internal revolt that lately opposed the social media giant. Employees have publicly criticized the company and its executives for its management of Trump’s risk and its broader considerations that it is undermining democracy and, deliberately or accidentally, helping the president’s re-election. “I think Facebook is hurting other people on a large scale,” software engineer Max Wang said in a video posted on an internal discussion forum and received through Buzzfeed News when he left the company this month. “We failed.”
– As chaos envelops the Trump campaign, loyalists seek the following – in Mary Trump’s new book, a conclusive diagnosis of Donald Trump’s psychopathology – for some on Wall Street, beating Trump is more than cash – Bill Barr runs a wonder factory in October to justice – Bari Weiss makes his candidacy for martyrdom in the revival war – In Trump’s cult Gospel – According to the Archives: Unraveling the Symbiosis of Donald Trump and Roy Cohn
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