Facebook's content moderation files have been leaked.
The manual that Facebook uses to decide what content should or should not be allowed onto its site has been released. It’s called “Abuse Standard 6.1: Operation Manual for Content Moderators.” Armine Derkaoui, a Moroccan man paid $1 an hour to train how to screen Facebook, gave Gawker the internal document. It is very, very specific. (6.2 has since been released, which, alleluia, allows pictures of bodily fluids – but crucially, and somewhat bafflingly, unless someone’s captured in the process.) You can see the 6.1 manual below.
The manual also sheds light on the millions of requests to take things down that Facebook receives a day from its 845 million users. It outsources moderation to other clients – mostly in developing countries. Derkaoui worked for oDesk, one of the contractors; there are others, although Facebook is cagey about them.
The effect that it has on those that have to moderate (mostly young, well-educated, looking for a bit of extra work) is paramount. Many don’t last: “Pedophelia, Necrophelia, Beheadings, Suicides, etc. I left [because] I value my mental sanity,” said one to Gawker. Another likened the process to cleaning a sewer.
The guidelines have caused some uproar: they are very prudish in terms of sexual content and flesh; but less so when it comes to violence. Once again the thorny issue of internet censorship raises its ghastly head. We’ve had Google tailoring your searches; just how much power should a private company have over public discourse? And just where exactly does it get off telling people not to breastfeed?
Male nipples are OK. Facebook, said Gawker, has turned its users’ content into “gold.” But it also keeps a lot of stuff out of users’ sights – “porn, gore, racism, cyberbullying, and so on.” It’s “clean, well-lit” – an alternative to the “scary open Internet.” It does this thanks to a “small army” of moderators, like Derkaoui. However, its over-zealousness has often led to trouble. They removed an “innocent gay kiss” last April; they’ve also got rid of breast-feeding pics. Their tactics are not helped by “opacity.” But now we have the guidelines, which run to 17 pages. Content moderators look at a constant stream of pictures and so on that have been “reported by users.” It will get rid of “pretty tame stuff” – breastfeeding without clothes; sex toys in the context of activity; sexual fetishes; photoshopped images; drunk people; camel toes; violent speech – example “I love hearings skulls crack.” “When it comes to sex and nudity, Facebook is strictly PG-13.” Male nipples, however, are OK.
More sinisterly. But when it comes to violence, continued Gawker, Facebook is “more lenient.” You’re allowed gory pictures such as crushed heads and deep flesh wounds. You can put up pictures of marijuana, but not other drugs. You can’t put up “versus photos” which compare people – “ironic considering Mark Zuckerberg’s first hit, FaceSmash, ranked the attractiveness of female Harvard students.” Most interesting, though, is that dealing with “international compliance.” Holocaust deniers and attacks on the founder of Turkey, Ataturk, must be sent up to Facebook staff to deal with.
“We work to foster an environment where everyone can openly discuss issues and express their views, while respecting the rights of others,” reads Facebook’s community standards file, quoted on Gawker.
A battle cry for mothers. It’s all very well being down on bestiality, necrophilia and paedophilia, said Rowan Davies on The Guardian, but when it comes to breastfeeding she wanted to “emit a high-pitched whining noise.” Let’s be clear, here – breastfeeding needs a nipple. Sure, some mothers use “Hooter Hiders.” But many others can’t breastfeed without exposing a bit of flesh. There’s a contradiction in public life: whilst we’re told we must breastfeed, society doesn’t seem able to accept it. Facebook’s a highly “influential cultural mediator.” Its attitude to breastfeeding “gives succour to every shopping center security guard who’s ever told a nursing mother to put it away or leave the premises.” Mothers told to remove their breastfeeding pictures are “likely to be humiliated”, and “one step closer to giving up on breastfeeding.” So Comment is Free is going to post as many pictures of breastfeeding on its Facebook page as it can. Let’s see “whether Facebook takes them down.”
There are serious issues here. Breastfeeding pictures may be a problem, but it’s tempting, said a deeply unsettled Tarleton Gillespie on Salon, to focus on the specifics. What’s more important is what the document shows about what’s actually being posted on Facebook. It’s “hard not to be struck by the depravity” of some of the stuff. It’s not “difficult to abhor child pornography, but we can’t let that “obscure” the role that Facebook is taking on as custodian of public discourse. There have been dust ups about “artistic nudity”; on the iPhone there were problems with “political caricature”; on Amazon with “gay-themed books. We’re playing a “dangerous game: the private determination of the appropriate boundaries of public speech. That’s a whole lot of cultural power, in the hands of a select few.” As users we can’t be “naive.” The internet is “curated.” so we need to know how it’s curated, “by whom and to what ends.” It’s time for a “sober, public conversation about the kind of public discourse we want and need, and how we’re willing to get it.”