Fixing mistakes for better content moderation: Facebook

Facing ire over reports that it is protecting far-right activists and under-age accounts, Facebook on Wednesday said it takes the mistakes incredibly seriously and is working on to prevent these issues from happening again.

AFP PHOTO / Oli SCARFF / REPRESENTATIONAL

San Francisco: Facing ire over reports that it is protecting far-right activists and under-age accounts, Facebook on Wednesday said it takes the mistakes incredibly seriously and is working on to prevent these issues from happening again. Channel 4 Dispatches -- a documentary series that sent an undercover reporter to work as a content moderator in a Dublin-based Facebook contractor, showed that moderators at Facebook are preventing Pages from far-right activists from being deleted even after they violate the rules. In a blog post, Monika Bickert, Vice President of Global Policy Management at Facebook, said the TV report on Channel 4 in the UK has raised important questions about our policies and processes, including guidance given during training sessions in Dublin. "It's clear that some of what is in the programme does not reflect Facebook's policies or values and falls short of the high standards we expect. "We take these mistakes incredibly seriously and are grateful to the journalists who brought them to our attention. We have been investigating exactly what happened so we can prevent these issues from happening again," Bickert wrote. The documentary also showed that Facebook moderators have turned blind eye to under-age accounts. "Moderators are told they can only take action to close down the account of a child who clearly looks 10-year-old if the child actually admits in posts they are under-aged," reports said, citing the documentary. Facebook said it has immediately required all trainers in Dublin to do a re-training session -- and is preparing to do the same globally. "We also reviewed the policy questions and enforcement actions that the reporter raised and fixed the mistakes we found," the Facebook executive said. In a separate letter written to Nicole Kleeman, Executive Producer at Glasgow-based Firecrest Films who raised the issues with Facebook, Bickert said a review is going on regarding training practices across Facebook contractor teams, including the Dublin-based CPL Resources, the largest moderation centre for UK content.