The United Nations warned social network giant Facebook Thursday that it could become complicit in committing “horrific” war crimes should they fail to crackdown on “hate speech,” reports Yahoo News.
The UN’s Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said the company could be dragged before international criminal trials over their role in disseminating information, propaganda, and scheduled events that help promote violence and even genocide.
A scathing UN report released earlier this week outlined Facebook’s role in a string of atrocities in Myanmar.
“We felt early on very uncomfortable with what we were seeing in Myanmar, (but) in the early meetings that we had with Facebook, I didn’t think they were taking it seriously,” Mr Al-Hussein said. “Hopefully they’ve now awoken.”
“They have to be sure that they know where they are and what side of the law they are on,” he added.
Read the full report here.
ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook Introducing ‘TRUSTWORTHINESS RATING’ for All Users
Social media giant Facebook is quietly introduced new technology that assigns its users a “trustworthiness score” between zero and one; ranking people who appear to be malicious actors as a method of cracking down on “fake news.”
According to the Washington Post, Facebook has been working on the software for more than a year in a prolonged campaign to remove individuals seeking to “game tech systems” for negative purposes.
“The previously unreported ratings system, which Facebook has developed over the last year, shows that the fight against the gaming of tech systems has evolved to include measuring the credibility of users to help identify malicious actors,” writes the Post.
The developers behind the project aren’t disclosing what factors will influence a user’s rating; adding the score will not be an “absolute indicator” and may fluctuate over time.
“The score is one measurement among thousands of new behavioral clues that Facebook now takes into account as it seeks to understand risk. Facebook is also monitoring which users have a propensity to flag content published by others as problematic, and which publishers are considered trustworthy by user,” adds the article.
Read the full story here.
ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA: Trump Slams Platforms for ‘SILENCING MILLIONS’ of Americans
President Trump called-out social media platforms for “silencing millions of people” Friday morning; blasting major tech companies for taking down posts and stories published by prominent conservatives.
“Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!” tweeted Trump.
Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people. Can’t do this even if it means we must continue to hear Fake News like CNN, whose ratings have suffered gravely. People have to figure out what is real, and what is not, without censorship!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018
The Commander-in-Chief’s tough talk comes after Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms moved to clampdown on speech some users may find “offensive” or “inappropriate.”