Leaked Docs Show Facebook’s Internal Turmoil About ‘Hate Speech’

Breitbart Tech: A collection of leaked documents appears to show Facebook redefining rules around hate speech and re-educating content moderators following the Charlottesville protest in 2017.

According to leaked internal documents obtained by Motherboard, the 2017 Charlottesville protests were a moment of intense introspective for Facebook, which scrambled to redefine what they consider “hate speech” and to educate content moderators about American white nationalists. One training document obtained shortly after the protests reads: “Recent incidents in the United States (i.e. Charlottesville) have shown that there is potentially confusion about our hate org policies and the specific hate orgs in specific markets.”

A log of updates to hate speech policy documents show some of the new phrases and sentiments that were defined as hate speech following the Charlottesville protest. In November 2017, trainers added the comparison of Mexican people to worms as an example of hate speech, in December they added the comparison of Muslims and pigs, and in February, trainers added that referring to transgender people as “it” rather than their preferred pronouns was hate speech.

Five months after the Charlottesville protests, Facebook added slides explaining the social media firms position on white nationalism, supremacy, and separatism. Interestingly, the slides stated that the company does not “allow praise, support, or representation of white supremacy as an ideology” but does allow positions on white nationalism and separatism to be praised or discussed. more