Kenya’s Threat to Ban Facebook Could Backfire | WIRED
▻https://www.wired.com/story/kenya-facebook-elections-hate-speech-ban
Que Facebook ait du mal à filtrer les messages de haine produits par des particuliers, on peut le comprendre (même si cela remet en cause ce que l’on peut penser des médias sociaux). Mais que Facebook n’arrive pas à filtrer les publicités incitant à la haine... L’argent n’a pas d’odeur, mais celle de Facebook pue profondément.
In July, Meta touted its efforts to clamp down on hate speech on Facebook ahead of Kenya’s August 9 election. It spoke too soon. The company continued to permit ads encouraging ethnic violence in the country, according to a new report—and now Meta’s platforms face a possible suspension.
In the report, researchers from the activist group Global Witness and the British law firm Foxglove Legal attempted to buy ads that included hate speech and calls for violence, including genocide, in both Swahili and English. Meta’s ad systems eventually approved all of them.
“It is very clear that Facebook is in violation of the laws of our country,” Danvas Makori, the commissioner of Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), said in a press conference following the publication of the Global Witness report. “They have allowed themselves to be a vector of hate speech and incitement, misinformation, and disinformation.” The NCIC said Meta would have a week to comply with the country’s hate speech regulations, or be suspended. (The NCIC and the Communications Authority did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication).
But shutting down the platform, or even the mere threat of doing so, could have long-term consequences, says Odanga Madung, a Kenyan journalist and Mozilla fellow who has researched disinformation and hate speech on social platforms. “We have been saying for years that if the platforms do not clean up their act, their models of doing business won’t be sustainable,” says Madung. Leaving up hate speech and other content that may violate local laws provides governments an easy justification to ban social platforms altogether. “In authoritarian governments, or governments with authoritarian streaks, they are looking for convenient reasons to get rid of platforms.”
Kenya formed the NCIC in 2008 to ensure peaceful elections, after the results of the country’s 2007 presidential elections led to widespread violence and the displacement of some 600,000 people. Earlier this year, the commission warned that hate speech on social platforms had increased 20 percent in 2022, citing the “misuse of social media platforms to perpetuate ethnic hate speech and incitement to violence.” Experts have warned that this year’s elections are also at risk of becoming violent.
In June, Global Witness and Foxglove found that Meta continued to approve ads in Amharic targeting Ethiopian users that included hate speech and calls for violence. Facebook has been implicated in spreading hate speech and stoking ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict.
Crider argues that Facebook needs to invest more in its moderation practices and protections for democracy. She worries that even the threat of a ban allows the company to deflect accountability for the problems it has left unaddressed.
“What the researchers did was stress-test Facebook’s systems and proved that what the company was saying was hogwash,” says Madung. The fact that Meta allowed ads on the platform despite a review process “raises questions about their ability to handle other forms of hate speech,” says Madung, including the vast amount of user-generated content that does not require preapproval.