Facebook turns a blind eye to underage users and allows extreme content to remain on the platform
CHILD'S PLAY TV investigation finds that Facebook turns a
blind eye to underage users and allows extreme content to remain on the
platform
Channel 4's Dispatches programme found that Facebook
moderators often 'pretend they don't know what under-age looks like' when it
comes to users under the age of 13
By Rod McPhee, Bizarre Reporter 17th July 2018, 12:33 am
FACEBOOK ignores underage users and knowingly allows
extreme material to remain its site, according to a new Channel 4
investigation.
An undercover probe by the broadcaster’s Dispatches
programme went inside the web giant’s moderation department which handles
complaints, but found bosses even allowed racist or violent posts to remain.
And many reported posts took days to tackle, despite the
company saying offensive content should be dealt with within 24 hours.
In footage shot by an undercover reporter, one staff
member said: “If you start censoring, people lose interest. It’s all about
making money at the end of the day.”
Another staff member featured in the documentary, which
airs tonight at 9pm, revealed their approach to combatting users beneath the
age minimum of 13.
They said: “We have to have an admission that the person
is underage. If not, we just like pretend that we are blind and that we don’t
know what underage looks like.”
Dispatches revealed that Facebook’s UK’s moderation
operations, which are outsourced to Dublin-based company Cpl Resources plc, has
a backlog of 7,000 daily complaints about posts.
The documentary revealed how a child abuse campaigner
asked the company to remove footage of a two-year-old boy being beaten up by a
man. They refused as it didn’t violate their terms and conditions, and within
24 hours the graphic images were shared more than 44,000 times.
The company actually used the footage as an example of
content which should not be removed during training sessions.
Unless it was live-streamed, the also admitted they would
not report footage of child abuse to police.
During training to join the moderation team, the undercover
reporter was shown a cartoon of a girl appearing to be drowned with the
caption: “When your daughter’s first crush is a little negro boy.”
He was told this was a post which should not be removed.
Staff would also allow abusive comments of Muslims to be
kept on the site, so long as they were called “Muslim immigrants” — and in some
cases images of self-harm were also kept up.
Facebook also appeared to show favour to right-wing
groups, with controversial Britain First allowed more violations than the
company’s rules allow before their page was eventually taken down in a bid to
protect the social network’s revenue.
A staff member says: “If you start censoring, people lose
interest.”
One worker said: “They had eight or nine violations and
they’re only allowed five. But obviously they have a lot of followers so
they’re generating a lot of revenue for Facebook.”
In the documentary, Roger McNamee, one of Facebook’s
earliest investors and former mentor of the site’s boss Mark Zuckerberg,
claimed that extreme content was the company’s money-making “crack cocaine.”
He said: “If you’re going to have an advertising based
business, you need them to see the ads so you want them to spend more time on
the site.
“They want as much extreme content as they can get.”
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