Facebook recently went ahead and updated their algorithms which take care of hate speech- where they made certain interesting changes. It has been brought into the open that the current algorithm puts hate speech against the black community at the highest priority, whereas hate speech against the white population features at the lowest level. There is a new system set up by the tech giant, one that features hate speech. And this system has been updated to delete any hateful language that has been aimed towards minorities. The comments, as mentioned by the Facebook engineers, seem to be the worst among the worst.
Facebook has stated that it would now be scoring offensive posts and hate speech. Here, comments which are directed towards ‘Americans’, ‘men’, or ‘white’ would have the lowest priority. While users would still be able to report them, the company is less likely to take any action against it.
What is Facebook’s WoW Project All About?
The entire update came after Mark Zuckerberg promised to crackdown on hate speech all the way back in July. There were several advertisers who boycotted the social media platform, and quite a few civil rights groups who joined in the backlash.
Previously, Facebook used to treat every single hate speech under the same microscope. Even anti-semitic slurs were treated as slurs against white people. This project, called the WoW project would see to it that almost 10000 posts are deleted every single day. Most of the tech giants based in Silicon Valley- Facebook, Google, Twitter, have come under the spotlight due to the way they have been dealing with commentary during the election. This also includes Twitter’s bizarre decision to lock down the account of the New York Post for two weeks.
On the other hand, most of the Republicans believe that Facebook is going to openly discriminate against whites. For, it is now simply embracing the concept of critical race theory- something that goes against the principle of law enforcement and colorblind rule.
