Kamala Harris: Facebook removes racist posts about US vice-president-elect
Facebook has taken down a string of racist and misogynistic posts, memes and comments about US Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris. The social network removed the content after BBC News alerted it to three groups that regularly hosted hateful material on their pages. Facebook says it takes down 90% of hate speech before it is flagged. One media monitoring body described the pages as “dedicated to propagating racist and misogynistic smears”. However, despite the pages being places where hate-speech is regularly directed towards the vice-president-elect, Facebook said it would not take action on the groups themselves.
Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said: “Facebook’s removal of this content only after it’s been flagged to them by the media confirms that the rules and guidelines they establish are hollow because they put little to no effort into detection and enforcement. “We are talking about the lowest of low-hanging fruit from a detection perspective.
“And yet, these escaped Facebook’s notice until flagged by a third party.” The pages included accusations Ms Harris was not a US citizen – because her mother was from India and her father from Jamaica. (BBC)…[+]