How Wh*te Became a Bad Word on Facebook
The Problem With the Algorithmic Policing of the Internet
White, yes, the word is white, and it’s become a bad word on Facebook in the last several months, one that can get you locked in the unanimous “Facebook jail” as some users have come to call it, due to the bizarre and unpredictable nature of the algorithms which enforce the community standards on the site. Facebook is hands down the largest social media company in the world, followed by YouTube in second place, and WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger come in 3rd and 4th places, respectively, meaning that of the top 4 social media networks, Facebook and its subsidiaries account for three of those sites.
I feel like I should qualify, here, that this story has less to do with race and more to do with the technologies we keep and the lines which are blurring between truly hateful speech and benign speech, the difference between the two being something that machines can’t quite detect; but, the underlying racial discussion and questions should be implied, though none of this should be construed to mean that white people are somehow oppressed. Machines can’t decipher context as well as human beings can, meaning the system sometimes catches extremely innocuous statements or very valid social concerns, such as a discussion about white cultures that have oppressed…
