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LONDON: A Facebook official has admitted that the company "made a mistake" by not suppressing a message inciting racial hatred in Sri Lanka, announced on Tuesday (November 27th) an international audience on misinformation and misinformation. London.
Mr. Richard Allan, vice president of political solutions for Facebook, was interviewed by Singaporean MP Edwin Tong about a message written in Sinhalese in March calling for the killing of all Muslims. Mr. Tong asked if this article violated the terms of service of the social media company.
Mr. Allan agreed.
"It was put in place at a time when tensions between the Sri Lankan population and Muslims were significant, causing property damage and even death. Riots. Damage to mosques. And finally, the Sri Lankan government has declared the state of emergency. Would you agree? "Said Mr. Tong.
Mr. Allan replied, "Yes."
"Would you agree that, in the context of this kind of tension in Sri Lanka, the creation of such a post would invariably go far, divide these tensions or further accentuate these tensions and divide the community?" ? "Asked Mr. Tong.
Mr. Allan responded, "Yes, we must delete this high priority content."
When Mr. Tong asked why Facebook was refusing to take the post in question, even after the Sri Lankan Minister of Communication pointed out, Mr. Allan said it was a "simple mistake" from a Facebook employee.
At this point, Mr. Tong intervened. He claimed that it was not a mistake and that Facebook had replied to a user that the publication did not violate community standards.
Mr. Allan was not in agreement. "It was a mistake," he said. "I just want to be clear that someone has made a mistake in the exam."
He also disagreed with Mr. Tong's question about whether this case shows that we can "trust Facebook to do the right assessment" of what may appear on its platform. form.
"We make mistakes … serious mistakes; our responsibility is to reduce the number of errors, "he said.
"We are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, where we would be creating a dictionary of terms of hate speech in all languages."
He added, "The best way to solve this problem is to use a dictionary of terms used in Sinhala hate speech, which has been revealed to a Sinhala-speaking reviser, who can make sure that we do the work properly. "
Mr. Tong replied, "Mr. Allan, in this case, while one of the excuses could be that your users or your proofreaders do not understand Sinhalese, when the Sri Lankan Minister of it is a hate speech and it must be removed. and you examine it, your employees review it and say that hundreds of thousands of people examine it, but they do not seem to respect the same philosophy that you have expressed in your own policies . "
The mail was stopped only when the Sri Lankan government blocked Facebook.
When Tong asked whether governments should resort to such measures to solve the problem of deliberate falsehoods online, Allan said Facebook "would rather not do it."
"This is where I think openness should be … and I hope you will have a constructive relationship with my colleagues in Singapore working on these issues," Allan said.
"I want us to be able to share with you the pros and cons of how we think we are doing, while hoping you will always push us to improve."
To this response, Mr. Tong replied: "We look forward to it because what happened, for example in Sri Lanka, and many others, should never happen . "
Mr. Allan said, "No, and as a Facebook employee, I am ashamed to see such things happen, that's what they do and they should not."
ON FACEBOOK AND ELECTIONS
Mr. Tong was joined by two colleagues from the Singapore Parliament, Mr. Pritam Singh and Ms. Sun Xueling, in London. Mr. Singh asked Mr. Allan what Facebook was doing to fight the "falsification" of elections.
Allan said that for "every meaningful election," Facebook is now creating a "war room" – a task force of experts to understand the risks of this election and deploy the tools and technology needed to deal with it. these risks.
Mr. Singh asked if smaller countries would also fall into Facebook's "war room" concept.
"In an ideal world, it's every election, everywhere, all the time. I think our current resources allow us to review all national elections, "said Allan.
"So, if there are national elections in Singapore, for example, they will be covered."
He added: "We had a similar working group around elections in Latvia. So we look at every election, whether the country is large or small, at the national level. And then the question is: can we also include that in regional and local elections? "
Singh also asked whether Facebook would consider working with local electoral authorities and political party representatives to remove or report publications that could undermine the political process.
"We think it's essential. And again, I want to repeat … the people who decide if an election is free and fair are you, your authorities, and the political parties, "Allan said.
"So we want to do all that is necessary so that everyone can be certain that elections are free and fair – and we can not do it ourselves.
"We can create tools, we can work with you, but at the end of the day, we need to work with you to achieve that common goal to which we contribute positively rather than negatively to the elections in your country."
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