Facebook’s software has been automatically creating content for extremist groups, according to several news reports. An anonymous whistleblower who first uncovered this has filed an official complaint to US regulators.
Facebook’s tools were found to be automatically creating videos like “celebration” and “memories” for pages that had enough views or likes. This includes extremist pages and groups linked to al-Qaeda and white supremacists.
The whistleblower conducted their study on Facebook over the course of five months. In that time, they’ve been monitoring pages of 3000 people who liked or are connected to organisations that the US deems terrorist organisations.
In response, Facebook has released a statement saying that it doesn’t claim to find every piece of terrorist content. It also claims that it has been detecting and removing such content at a higher success rate than before.
(Source: BBC, Channel News Asia)
