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Regularly criticized for allowing too much hateful and racist speech to pass, Facebook is currently modifying its algorithms.
The social network wants to crack down more harshly on content attacking minorities than against whites, men or Americans, the
Washington Post
reported Thursday
.
The social network wishes in particular to focus on malicious content against black people, mestizos, Muslims, Jews, and members of the LGBTQ community, details the American daily which has consulted internal documents.
An initiative that could be frowned upon
Such an initiative could be badly received by some of the users, on the right in particular, who already consider that social networks disadvantage conservative messages.
Mark Zuckerberg's company has for years mastered the automatic removal of certain content, linked to pornography or terrorism for example.
The spread of hate online is more complicated to manage, as machines find it difficult to differentiate between news, humor, parodies, rumors and insults.
As a result, Facebook tends to remove problematic content directed at white people more easily and to report posts from people of color more often, the
Washington Post
reports
.
A boycott campaign
The platform therefore wishes to improve its automatic moderation system by making it more sensitive to hate speech against minorities.
The initiative, called "WoW Project", is still in its infancy, says the newspaper.
Facebook did not immediately respond to the requests.
Like other large social networks, the group faced a boycott this summer from several large groups, which accused them of not fighting enough against content that incites hatred.
Mark Zuckerberg's group has recently focused its moderation efforts on this subject and announced in mid-November that it had removed more than 22 million hateful content this summer, in particular thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.
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