Internal Documents Reveal Bizarre Facebook Rules for Censorship of ‘Hate Speech’
According to the paper “these rules are then often applied by external service providers, such as the Bertelsmann subsidiary Arvato in Berlin. Employees attend internal training workshops where they learn what should be deleted and what shouldn’t.”
Despite these categories having some protection in theory, Facebook users are generally allowed to speak badly about them as long as it doesn’t include condemning actual people for being part of them.
Also, a “protected category” combined with another “protected category” will result in another category which, if spoken badly, can lead to censorship.
For instance, writing “Irish women are dumb,” which includes both “national origins” and “sex” categories, will break the community rules, meaning that such a post would be deleted. This is because most Facebook staff are SJW women.
But a post saying “Irish teenagers are dumb” won’t break the community rules, because a combination of a protected category with an unprotected category results in an unprotected category, thus is allowed.
The internal documents related to migrants and refugees also raise questions about how well the rules are enforced.
Writing “fucking migrants” is allowed, as “migrant” isn’t a category Facebook wants to protect.
The rule claims that advocating hate against migrants is allowed under certain circumstances: posts saying “migrants are dirty” are allowed.
The revelations by the newspaper also expose the dire conditions in which Facebook moderators work. According to the paper, 600 people in Berlin are working for as little as the minimum wage. Some anonymously complained that they are inadequately prepared. Struggling to comprehend the ill-defined rules of moderation, they feel stressed and overloaded.
Some employees of the Facebook moderation team have reported considerable psychological problems because of their exposure to shocking content, such as torture, murder, or child pornography.
