Facebook’s Moderation Algorithm Banned Users for Historical Evidence of Slavery

June 11, 2020

Facebook's automated content moderation system mistakenly censored and banned Australian users for posting an 1890s photo of Aboriginal men in chains, due to nudity. This historical evidence depicted slavery in Australia.

The incident underscores the need for trustworthy AI and safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping responsible AI governance, JOIN US to learn more about how this incident maps to HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Measure function).

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.635, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.634, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.616, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: facebook
Alleged developer: facebook
Alleged harmed parties: facebook-users-sharing-photo-evidence-of-slavery, facebook-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/275

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.