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Global Witness accuses Facebook of approving hate-filed ads calling for ethnic violence in Kenya amid election tensions
Facebook has been accused of failing in its responsibility to detect and prevent hate-filled messages on its platform.
The latest controversy involves hateful advertisement centering around Kenya’s presidential election planned for next month. Business Insider Africa gathered that the ads called for ethnic violence in the lead up to the highly contested election.
According to a statement released by London-based NGO Global Witness, the hateful advertisements were ran as part of a joint investigation conducted with Foxglove, a legal non-profit organisation.
Global Witness said the adverts (20 of them) were ran in both Swahili and English. The adverts also contained clear hate speech preaching ethnic violence. Regardless, Facebook quickly approved them to go live after requesting that some minor grammatical errors be corrected.
“It is appalling that Facebook continues to approve hate speech ads that incite violence and fan ethnic tensions on its platform. In the lead up to a high stakes election in Kenya, Facebook claims its systems are even more primed for safety – but our investigation once again shows Facebook’s staggering inability to detect hate speech ads on its platform,” said Nienke Palstra, a Senior Campaigner at Global Witness.
On its part, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) said it has put extensive measures in place to checkmate the lapses, and is particularly committed to ridding its platform of hate speech in the lead up to the high stakes election in Kenya.
But Global Witness felt Meta’s comment on the development was a mere public relations effort.
“Facebook claims to have ‘super-efficient AI models to detect hate speech’, but our findings are a stark reminder of the continued risk of hate and incitement to violence on their platform. As one of the world’s most powerful companies, instead of releasing empty PR-led statements, Facebook must make real and meaningful investments and changes to keep hate speech off its platform,” Palstra said in response to Meta’s statement.
Global Witness further stated that the development raises concerns about Facebook’s content moderation capabilities. The NGO said this is not the first time their investigation has found Facebook lacking in its responsibility to detect and prevent hate speech on its platform. Previous investigations by the NGO found that the same thing has happened in Myanmar and Ethiopia.
To this end, Global Witness and Foxglove urged Facebook and its parent company to, among other things, urgently increase their content moderation capabilities and integrity systems so as to be able to mitigate risk before, during and after the upcoming Kenyan election.
