Facebook will not delete videos of violent death, abortion and self-harm, leaked guidelines show
Facebook will not delete videos of violent death,
abortion and self-harm, leaked guidelines show
By Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT & Kate
McCann,SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT 21 MAY 2017 • 8:45PM
Facebook is refusing to delete videos and images of
"violent death", abortion and self-harm because the web giant does
not want to censor its users, it has emerged.
The American social media giant also allows people to
live stream attempts to self-harm because it “doesn’t want to censor or punish
people in distress”.
The website's ethical guidelines, which were leaked to
The Guardian, revealed that it has instructed staff not to remove controversial
content which many would find deeply offensive.
It comes amid a growing row over Facebook's
responsibility to remove offensive material from its site. MPs have repeatedly
called on the company to do more to take down violent content.
Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said last week she would
bring in new powers to force companies like Facebook to explain why they have
failed to remove harmful content.
Language such as
‘I’m going to kill you’ or ‘F*** off and die’ is not credible and is a violent
expression of dislike and frustration
Facebook
guildelines
But the leaked documents revealed that Facebook
moderators - of which there are only 4,500 to police the accounts of nearly 2
billion users - are instructed to delete controversial material only in certain
circumstances.
The documents include more than 100 internal training
manuals, spreadsheets and flowcharts on how Facebook moderates issues such as
violence, hate speech, pornography and racism.
Videos of abortions were allowed, the documents claimed,
as long as there is no nudity while the website will allow people to livestream
attempts to self-harm because it “doesn’t want to censor or punish people in
distress”.
Another document said all “handmade” art showing nudity
and sexual activity was allowed but digitally made art showing sexual activity
is not.
Photos of animal abuse could also be shared, with only
extremely upsetting imagery to be marked as “disturbing”, according to a copy
of the rulebook.
Types of remarks that could be permitted because they
were not credible included: “Little girl needs to keep to herself before daddy
breaks her face,” and “I hope someone kills you.”
Other remarks by the website which were apparently
allowed included how “to snap a b----’s neck", or “f--- off and die”
because they were not regarded as credible threats.
In one of the leaked documents, Facebook acknowledged
“people use violent language to express frustration online” and feel “safe to
do so”.
It said: “We should say that violent language is most
often not credible until specificity of language gives us a reasonable ground
to accept that there is no longer simply an expression of emotion but a
transition to a plot or design.
“From this perspective language such as ‘I’m going to
kill you’ or ‘F*** off and die’ is not credible and is a violent expression of
dislike and frustration.”
It added: “People commonly express disdain or
disagreement by threatening or calling for violence in generally facetious and
unserious ways.”
Yvette Cooper, a former Labour Cabinet minister who
chaired the House of Commons home affairs select committee in the last
parliament, said the leaks "show why we were right to call on social media
companies to urgently review their community guidelines as too much harmful and
dangerous content is getting through".
She said: "In most cases the reality of sharing vile
and violent images of violence and child abuse simply perpetuates the
humiliation and abuse of a child.
"Images should be given to the police and removed
instead. Facebook are getting this wrong and need to urgently change.
"These companies are hugely powerful and
influential. They have given people a platform to do amazing and wonderful
things but also dangerous and harmful things.
"Given the impact of the content decisions they
make, their standards should be transparent and debated publicly, not decided
behind closed doors.
"Tim Loughton, a former Tory minister who also sat
on the committee, added: "This appears to show that Facebook's control
over content on its platform is in complete chaos.
"Clearly they need to clarify the rules of what is
'in' or what is 'out' and make sure they have sufficient moderator capacity to
implement it transparently and fairly."
Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy
management, said that the service had almost 2 billion users and that it was
difficult to reach a consensus on what to allow.
She said: “Keeping people on Facebook safe is the most
important thing we do.
“Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that over the next
year, we'll be adding 3,000 people to our community operations team around the
world — on top of the 4,500 we have today — to review the millions of reports
we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly.
"In addition to investing in more people, we're also
building better tools to keep our community safe. We’re going to make it
simpler to report problems to us, faster for our reviewers to determine which
posts violate our standards and easier for them to contact law enforcement if
someone needs help.”
He said: “Over the last few weeks, we've seen people
hurting themselves and others on Facebook -- either live or in video posted
later.
“It's heartbreaking, and I've been reflecting on how we
can do better for our community. If we're going to build a safe community, we
need to respond quickly.”
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