The app founded to share cute photos is now using AI to censor “hate speech” in direct messages, enforcing an Anglo-American notion of banning the ever-increasing expanse of unapproved thoughts on the rest of the planet.
Anyone who sends direct messages containing “hate speech” or abuse shall henceforth be banned, Instagram announced on Wednesday. Previously, they only suspended such users for a period of time. While that sounds great on the surface – nobody wants hate or abuse – it leaves open the very real question of who gets to define that, and how.
Facebook’s enforcement report reveals AI is deleting 97 PERCENT of ‘hate speech’ before anyone reports it
Facebook has patted itself on the back for nuking almost all “hate speech” that supposedly violated its rules. But not only was most content deleted before anyone could flag it, users weren’t even allowed to appeal most deletions.
Unveiling its Community Standards Enforcement Report for the fourth quarter of 2020 on Thursday, Facebook bragged that its expanded use of artificial intelligence had helped it delete almost twice as much “bullying and harassment” content as the previous quarter, just one of several categories in which removals skyrocketed, while its Instagram subsidiary dramatically expanded its ability to catch suicide and self-injury related content.
Facebook axed 6.3 million bullying items, nearly doubling last quarter’s 3.5 million and assisted in large part by its AI technology. Expanded translation ability helped it remove 26.9 million pieces of “hate speech” content, up from 22.1 million in the third quarter. And Instagram nabbed 6.6 million pieces of hate speech while more than doubling the amount of suicide and self-harm content it removed – from 1.3 million to 3.4 million this quarter.
