If, like many Australian Muslims, you have reported hate speech on Facebook and received an automated response saying it does not violate the platform’s community standards, you are not alone. We and our team are the first Australian social scientists to receive funding through Facebook’s Content Policy Research Awards, which we used to investigate hate speech on LGBTQI+ community pages in five Asian countries: India, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia did. We looked at three aspects of hate speech regulation in the Asia Pacific region over 18 months. First we mapped out hate speech laws in our case study countries to understand how this problem can be tackled legally. We also looked to see whether Facebook’s definition of hate speech included all recognized forms and references to this disturbing behavior. In addition, we mapped out Facebook’s content regulation teams, talking to employees about how the company’s policies and procedures worked to identify emerging forms of hate.
Even though Facebook funded our study, it could not give us access to a dataset of hate speech for privacy reasons. That’s why we were unable to test how effectively its in-house moderators classify hate. Instead, we captured posts and comments from the top three LGBTQI+ public Facebook pages in each country to look for hate speech that was either missed by the platform’s machine intelligence filters or by human moderators. We interviewed the administrators of these Pages about their experience reducing hate, and what they thought Facebook could do to help them reduce abuse. They told us that Facebook would often dismiss their reports of hate speech, even if the post clearly violated its Community Standards. In some cases the originally deleted messages will be reposted upon appeal.
Most Page admins said that the so-called flagging process rarely worked, and they found it inefficient. They wanted Facebook to do more consultation with them to get a better idea of what types of abuse they post and why they create hate speech within their cultural context. Facebook has long had a problem with the scale and scope of hate speech on its platform in Asia. For example, while it has banned some Hindu extremists, it has left their pages online. However, during our study we were pleased to see that Facebook broadened its definition of hate speech, which now captures a wider range of hate speech. It also explicitly recognizes that what happens online can trigger offline violence. It is worth noting that in the countries we focused on, hate speech is rarely legally prohibited. We found that other regulations, such as cyber security or religious tolerance laws, could be used to act against hate speech, but could instead be used to stifle political dissent. We concluded that Facebook’s problem is not in defining hate, but in its inability to identify certain types of hate, such as those posted in minority languages and regional dialects. It also often fails to properly respond to user reports of hate material.
problem of minority languages
Media reports have shown that Facebook is struggling to automatically recognize hate posted in minority languages. It has failed to provide training materials to its own moderators in local languages, even though many are from Asia Pacific countries where English is not a first language. Specifically in the Philippines and Indonesia, we found that LGBTIQ+ groups face unacceptable levels of discrimination and intimidation. These include death threats, targeting Muslims and threats to stone or behead.
On Indian pages, Facebook filters failed to catch the vomiting emoji posted in response to gay wedding photos, and dismissed some very obvious reports of profanity. In Australia, on the other hand, we did not find any infrequent hate speech – only other types of insensitive and inappropriate comments. This may indicate that less abuse is posted, or that there is more effective moderation of the English language from Facebook or Page administrators. Similarly, LGBTIQ+ groups in Myanmar experienced very little hate speech. But we do know that Facebook is working hard to reduce hate speech on its platform in the wake of the persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority. Furthermore, it is likely that gender diversity is not as volatile a theme in Myanmar as it is in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. LGBTIQ+ rights are heavily politicized in these countries.
Facebook has taken some important steps towards tackling hate speech. However we are concerned that COVID-19 has forced the platform to rely more on machine moderation. That too at a time when it can only automatically recognize hate in about 50 languages – even though thousands of languages are spoken every day across the region. Our report to Facebook outlines several key recommendations to help improve its approach to combating hate on its platform. Overall, we urge the Company to meet more regularly with oppressed groups in the region, so that it can learn more about hatred in their local contexts and languages. This needs to happen along with boosting the number of policy experts from their country and in-house moderators with minority language expertise.
Reflecting efforts in Europe, Facebook also needs to develop and promote its trusted partner channel. It provides a visible, official hate speech-reporting partner organization through which people can report hate activities directly to Facebook during crises such as the Christchurch mosque attacks. More broadly, we want governments and NGOs to collaborate to set up an Asian regional hate speech surveillance trial conducted by the European Union. Following the example of the European Union, such initiatives could help identify immediate trends in hate speech across the region, strengthen Facebook’s local reporting partnership, and reduce the overall incidence of hateful content on Facebook.
(This article first appeared on The Conversation. Written by Fiona R. Martin: Associate Professor in Convergent and Online Media, University of Sydney and M. Sinpeng: Lecturer in Government and International Relations, University of Sydney)
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