Facebook: Fixing mistakes for better content moderation

San Francisco Facing ire over reports that it is protecting farright activists and underage accounts Facebook on Wednesday said it takes the mistakes incredibly seriously and is working on to prevent these issues from happening again Channel 4 Dispatches a documentary series that sent an undercover reporter to work as a content moderator in a Dublinbased Facebook contractor showed that moderators at Facebook are preventing Pages from farright activists from being deleted even after they violate the rulesIn a blog post Monika Bickert Vice President of Global Policy Management at Facebook said the TV report on Channel 4 in the UK has raised important questions about our policies and processes including guidance given during training sessions in DublinIts clear that some of what is in the programme does not reflect Facebooks policies or values and falls short of the high standards we expectWe take these mistakes incredibly seriously and are grateful to the journalists who brought them to our attention We have been investigating exactly what happened so we can prevent these issues from happening again Bickert wroteThe documentary also showed that Facebook moderators have turned blind eye to underage accountsModerators are told they can only take action to close down the account of a child who clearly looks 10yearold if the child actually admits in posts they are underaged reports said citing the documentaryFacebook said it has immediately required all trainers in Dublin to do a retraining session and is preparing to do the same globallyWe also reviewed the policy questions and enforcement actions that the reporter raised and fixed the mistakes we found the Facebook executive saidIn a separate letter written to Nicole Kleeman Executive Producer at Glasgowbased Firecrest Films who raised the issues with Facebook Bickert said a review is going on regarding training practices across Facebook contractor teams including the Dublinbased CPL Resources the largest moderation centre for UK contentIn addition in relation to the content where mistakes were clearly made weve gone back an taken the correct action she saidFacebook had earlier promised to double the number of people working on its safety and security teams this year to 20000 This includes over 7500 content reviewersThe company said it does not allow people under 13 to have a Facebook accountIf a Facebook user is reported to us as being under 13 a reviewer will look at the content on their profile text and photos to try to ascertain their ageIf they believe the person is under 13 the account will be put on a hold This means they cannot use Facebook until they provide proof of their age We are investigating why any reviewers or trainers at CPL would have suggested otherwise Bickert saidFacebook said it does have a process to allow for a second look at certain Pages Profiles or pieces of content to make sure it has correctly applied its policiesWhile this process was previously referred to as shield or shielded review we changed the name to Cross Check in May to more accurately reflect the process the company saidCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever