Leaked documents from Facebook show types of content it allows

May 22, 2017 01:42 pm | Updated 01:43 pm IST

FILE - In this Monday, June 4, 2012, file photo, a girl looks at Facebook on her computer in Palo Alto, Calif. In a blog post Wednesday, May 3, 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will hire another 3,000 people to review videos of crime and suicides following murders shown live. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

FILE - In this Monday, June 4, 2012, file photo, a girl looks at Facebook on her computer in Palo Alto, Calif. In a blog post Wednesday, May 3, 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will hire another 3,000 people to review videos of crime and suicides following murders shown live. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Leaked Facebook Inc documents show how the social media company moderates issues such as hate speech, terrorism, pornography and self-harm on its platform, the Guardian reported, citing internal guidelines seen by the newspaper.

New challenges such as “revenge porn” have overwhelmed Facebook's moderators who often have just ten seconds to make a decision, the Guardian said. The social media company reviews more than 6.5 million reports of potentially fake accounts a week, the newspaper added.

Many of the company's content moderators have concerns about the inconsistency and peculiar nature of some of the policies. Those on sexual content, for example, are said to be the most complex and confusing, the Guardian said.

Facebook had no specific comment on the report but said safety was its overriding concern. "Keeping people on Facebook safe is the most important thing we do. We work hard to make Facebook as safe as possible while enabling free speech. This requires a lot of thought into detailed and often difficult questions, and getting it right is something we take very seriously", Facebook's Head of Global Policy Management Monica Bickert said in a statement.

Facebook confirmed that it was using software to intercept graphic content before it went on the website, but it was still in its early stages. The leaked documents included internal training manuals, spreadsheets and flowcharts, the Guardian said.

The newspaper gave the example of Facebook policy that allowed people to live-stream attempts to self-harm because it doesn’t want to censor or punish people in distress.

Facebook moderators were recently told to escalate to senior managers any content related to 13 Reasons Why , the Netflix original drama series based on the suicide of a high school student, because it feared inspiration of copycat behaviour, the Guardian reported.

Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the documents published on the Guardian website.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.