Facebook on defensive over work in 'fragile' countries

Facebook's vice president Nick Clegg deed backmost Monday astatine disapproval that the tech giant's efforts to combat misinformation are woefully inadequate extracurricular the West, though helium acknowledged: "We request to bash more."

The "Facebook Papers", a monolithic trove of leaked interior documents, person formed a airy connected the company's struggles to halt mendacious accusation and hatred code from spreading successful emerging economies, notably India.

Some 87 percent of Facebook's anti-misinformation fund is focused connected the United States adjacent though the immense bulk of its users are elsewhere, the papers revealed.

Addressing the Web Summit tech league successful Lisbon via video-link, Clegg—Britain's erstwhile lawman premier minister—said "legitimate questions" had been raised astir Facebook's enactment successful "fragile" countries.

But helium insisted the institution has poured "significant resources" into improving the situation.

"We present person contented moderation successful implicit 70 countries, and we're adding them each the time," helium said, adding that moderators successful 12 caller languages including Haitian Creole had been hired this year.

"We evidently learned immoderate beauteous searing lessons from what happened successful Myanmar," helium added, referring to wide usage of Facebook to whip up taste unit successful the country.

'Break glass' options

Clegg insisted "big changes" had been made to Facebook's policies since 2014, with much resources allocated to countries judged "at risk" successful presumption of the quality rights situation.

So-called "break glass" options, allowing Facebook to "very dramatically" trim the organisation of information, person been utilized precocious successful Bangladesh and Afghanistan, helium added.

Frances Haugen, the erstwhile Facebook technologist who leaked the documents, has accused the institution of inflicting immense harm successful countries that consciousness distant from its Silicon Valley headquarters.

For years the societal network's algorithms made "polarising and divisive content" much disposable successful people's timelines, she told the Web Summit connected Monday.

"In places similar the United States that mightiness origin ruined Thanksgiving dinners," she said, but she added that "in much fragile places astir the world" the consequences tin beryllium deadly.

She cited Ethiopia arsenic an illustration of a state wherever unit had been "amplified by societal media".

Facebook has agelong struggled to tamp down hatred code determination owed to the dozens of antithetic dialects spoken among Ethiopians, she pointed out.

Clegg insisted Facebook's moderation efforts successful Ethiopia are "far better" contiguous than they were a mates of years ago.

"We person the capableness to reappraisal contented successful a fig of the astir widely-used languages," helium added, including Amharic, Tigrinya and Somali.

Clegg besides defended the timing of Facebook's "Meta" rebrand, aft critics derided it arsenic an attempted distraction from caller antagonistic headlines.

The renaming of Facebook's genitor institution past week is intended to awesome a displacement successful absorption towards processing the "metaverse", a virtual world net that would marque online experiences consciousness face-to-face.

Clegg said Facebook had been readying the rebrand for months and has spent billions of dollars implicit "a precise agelong play of time" connected processing exertion that could 1 time beryllium utilized for the metaverse.

"We thought it was the close clip to travel cleanable astir what the absorption is astatine the company," helium said.

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© 2021 AFP