Description: Facebook’s hate-speech detection algorithms was found by company researchers to have under-reported less common but more harmful content that was more often experienced by minority groups such as Black, Muslim, LGBTQ, and Jewish users.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Facebook developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Facebook users of minority groups and Facebook users.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
163
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2021-11-21
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv1_Annotator-1 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsIncident Number
The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
163
Special Interest Intangible Harm
An assessment of whether a special interest intangible harm occurred. This assessment does not consider the context of the intangible harm, if an AI was involved, or if there is characterizable class or subgroup of harmed entities. It is also not assessing if an intangible harm occurred. It is only asking if a special interest intangible harm occurred.
yes
Date of Incident Year
The year in which the incident occurred. If there are multiple harms or occurrences of the incident, list the earliest. If a precise date is unavailable, but the available sources provide a basis for estimating the year, estimate. Otherwise, leave blank.
Enter in the format of YYYY
2021
Estimated Date
“Yes” if the data was estimated. “No” otherwise.
No
Multiple AI Interaction
“Yes” if two or more independently operating AI systems were involved. “No” otherwise.
no
Embedded
“Yes” if the AI is embedded in a physical system. “No” if it is not. “Maybe” if it is unclear.
no
CSETv1_Annotator-3 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsIncident Number
The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
163
Special Interest Intangible Harm
An assessment of whether a special interest intangible harm occurred. This assessment does not consider the context of the intangible harm, if an AI was involved, or if there is characterizable class or subgroup of harmed entities. It is also not assessing if an intangible harm occurred. It is only asking if a special interest intangible harm occurred.
yes
Date of Incident Year
The year in which the incident occurred. If there are multiple harms or occurrences of the incident, list the earliest. If a precise date is unavailable, but the available sources provide a basis for estimating the year, estimate. Otherwise, leave blank.
Enter in the format of YYYY
2015
Estimated Date
“Yes” if the data was estimated. “No” otherwise.
No
Multiple AI Interaction
“Yes” if two or more independently operating AI systems were involved. “No” otherwise.
no
Embedded
“Yes” if the AI is embedded in a physical system. “No” if it is not. “Maybe” if it is unclear.
no
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
wired.com · 2021
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
In public, Facebook seems to claim that it removes more than 90 percent of hate speech on its platform, but in private internal communications the company says the figure is only an atrocious 3 to 5 percent. Facebook wants us to believe tha…
washingtonpost.com · 2021
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
Last year, researchers at Facebook showed executives an example of the kind of hate speech circulating on the social network: an actual post featuring an image of four female Democratic lawmakers known collectively as “The Squad.”
The poste…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
