Earlier today, an error triggered Facebook to ask users whether every post on their News Feed contained hate speech.
People started noticing the mysterious glitch this afternoon and posted about it on social media. More irate users thought it was being used as a means to censor certain content.
This is weird.
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) May 1, 2018
Facebook is asking me about whether *my own post* on Facebook contains hate speech.
And also, the post is just a NYT story about restaurant trends in Austin, to which I've added no commentary. pic.twitter.com/ZIrUW4IW4q
Hey @facebook the irony of you flagging my Fox hit on the importance of free speech as potentially “hate speech” is pretty rich. pic.twitter.com/bSlYqpk7kO
— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) May 1, 2018
Facebook is now asking people if posts on their feed "contain hate speech." Just imagine how abused this is going to be in a world that believes disagreement is hate?
— Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) May 1, 2018
So… Facebook now has a little button on EVERY SINGLE POST that asks people if it's hate speech, and there's no way this could possibly go wrong ¯_(ツ)_/¯
— Christian Datoc (@TocRadio) May 1, 2018
https://twitter.com/ACTBrigitte/status/991338003820924928
However, Facebook determined a bug caused the internal feature to launch publicly. While it may seem the social network is protecting itself after receiving backlash, the nature of the prompt suggests it was never intended for release.
After a user selected “Yes” to “Does this post contain hate speech?” they were shown three buttons labeled “Test P 1,” “Test P 2,” and “Test P 3.” It’s not clear how many users were affected, but for those who were, the internal feature showed up in every timeline post, including advertisements.
A Facebook spokesperson told Gizmodo the company was conducting an “internal test” to “understand different types of speech, including speech we thought would not be hate.”
Facebook’s vice president of product management, Guy Rosen, said the problem was solved within 20 minutes. He tweeted one of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s posts as an example.
https://twitter.com/guyro/status/991348768757829632
For years, Facebook has been trying to improve the ways it polices its site for hate speech. It most recently published the full guidelines its moderators use to determine what content is and isn’t allowed.