New Delhi: Facebook came under fire again on Friday after its subject recommendation feature mistook black men for “primates” in a video. Even in the past, facial recognition software has been criticized by civil rights advocates because of the inaccuracy of people who are not white.
Because of this inaccuracy, many people of color have been wrongly arrested because it is being used by police to investigate.
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“We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations,” Facebook told AFP.
According to a New York Times report, Facebook users who watched a British tabloid video featuring black men received an auto-generated prompt asking if they “would like to continue watching videos about primates”.
Facebook further told AFP: “As soon as we realized this was happening, we disabled the entire theme recommendation feature, so we can investigate the cause and prevent it from happening again.” “
Humans are from the primate family but this particular video had nothing to do with monkeys, chimpanzees or gorillas.
The former design manager, Darcy Groves, took to Twitter to hint.
Um. This “keep watching” sign is unacceptable, @Facebook. And despite the video being over a year old, a friend got the hint yesterday. Guys on FB, please go ahead. it’s horrible. pic.twitter.com/vEHdnvF8ui
— Darcy Groves (@tweetsbydarci) 2 September 2021
“This is serious,” she wrote.
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