O mundo dos moderadores do Facebook

Inside Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech (New York Times):

How can Facebook monitor billions of posts per day in over 100 languages, all without disturbing the endless expansion that is core to its business? The company’s solution: a network of workers using a maze of PowerPoint slides spelling out what’s forbidden. (...)

As detailed as the guidelines can be, they are also approximations — best guesses at how to fight extremism or disinformation. And they are leading Facebook to intrude into sensitive political matters the world over, sometimes clumsily.

Increasingly, the decisions on what posts should be barred amount to regulating political speech — and not just on the fringes. In many countries, extremism and the mainstream are blurring. (...)

For a tech company to draw these lines is “extremely problematic,” said Jonas Kaiser, a Harvard University expert on online extremism. “It puts social networks in the position to make judgment calls that are traditionally the job of the courts.”

The bans are a kind of shortcut, said Sana Jaffrey, who studies Indonesian politics at the University of Chicago. Asking moderators to look for a banned name or logo is easier than asking them to make judgment calls about when political views are dangerous.

But that means that in much of Asia and the Middle East, Facebook bans hard-line religious groups that represent significant segments of society. Blanket prohibitions, Ms. Jaffrey said, amount to Facebook shutting down one side in national debates.

And its decisions often skew in favor of governments, which can fine or regulate Facebook.

In Sri Lanka, Facebook removed posts commemorating members of the Tamil minority who died in the country’s civil war. Facebook bans any positive mention of Tamil rebels, though users can praise government forces who were also guilty of atrocities.

Kate Cronin-Furman, a Sri Lanka expert at University College London, said this prevented Tamils from memorializing the war, allowing the government to impose its version of events — entrenching Tamils’ second-class status.