Facebook has just responded to a report that its artificial intelligence program has had little effect in reducing and removing violent content on the social network. According to the company, its AI is helping reduce the spread of hate speech.
Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president for integrity, denied claims that artificial intelligence technology used to tackle hate speech has little impact. Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook employees responsible for preventing offensive content from appearing on the platform do not believe the company is able to reliably detect them. A whistleblower had also said a few weeks ago that the social network encouraged hatred online to make profits.
Yet, according to Rosen, hate speech spread on Facebook has reportedly decreased by almost 50% in the last three quarters. ” We don’t want to see any hate on our platform, neither do our users or our advertisers, and we are transparent about our work to remove it. Rosen wrote. ” What these documents show is that our integrity work is a journey of several years. Although we will never be perfect, our teams are continually working to develop our systems, identify problems and build solutions. ”Says Facebook.
Facebook fights well against hate speech thanks to its AI
Rosen also argued that it was “wrong” to judge Facebook’s success in combating hate speech based solely on the removal of content, and that the decrease in the visibility of this content is a more significant measure.
According to figures shared by Facebook, the prevalence of hateful content on the platform has declined by nearly 50% over the past three quarters, reaching around 0.05% of content viewed, i.e. approximately 5 publications out of 10,000. However, since Facebook has billions of users who can share these hateful comments, it means that many people are seeing these posts. We must therefore fight even more aggressively against online hatred to limit its visibility.
Facebook is well aware of the harmful effects of its applications on the well-being of the youngest, but he had officially denied that they were dangerous. However, in response to the controversy, Instagram has announced the arrival of a new feature that will offer teenagers a break to preserve their sanity.