Facebook instructs trainees ‘not to take down violent videos’

Moderators are instructed to leave child abuse videos on Facebook to improve user experience, an investigation has found.

Facebook moderators have been instructed not to take down videos depicting child abuse, an investigation has found. Picture: AFP

Facebook content moderators are instructed to leave videos of violent child abuse on the site to improve user experience, an investigation has found.

When dealing with a graphic violent post, moderators are told that they have three options — ignore it, delete it, or mark it as disturbing, which places restrictions on who can see the content.

Clips showing the “repeated kicking, beating or slapping of a child or an animal by an adult”, “the inflicting of a burn or a cut wound by an adult” or “the tossing, rotating or shaking of an infant too young to stand by their wrists, ankles, legs, arms or neck” are not taken down. Instead they are marked as “disturbing child abuse” and remain accessible to anyone who claims to be over 18.

An undercover reporter for Channel 4’s Dispatches filmed training sessions at CPL Resources in Dublin, Facebook’s largest centre for UK content moderation. Trainees were shown a video of a young boy being stamped on as an example of what type of abuse would be allowed to remain on the platform.

When asked why violent content was left on the site, a moderator told the reporter that it was “for better user experience”. He added that “if you start censoring too much, then people lose interest in the platform … It’s all about making money at the end of the day”.

Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and an early investor in Facebook who has since criticised it, told Dispatches: “From Facebook’s point of view this is, this is just essentially, you know, the crack cocaine of their product. It’s the really extreme, really dangerous form of content that attracts the most highly engaged people on the platform.”

Nicci Astin, who campaigns against child abuse, reported the clip of the boy being stamped on to Facebook in 2012 but was told it did not violate the terms and conditions. It was not removed.

“Initially you see a little tiny boy, he must be about two or three in the video, with a man talking to him and shouting at him,” she told Dispatches. “Then he was hitting him and punching him, he was throwing him about. Then he was stamping and kicking on him. And then obviously the video cut. You’re left with knowing absolutely nothing apart from a sickening feeling that you’ve just seen some man beating up a tiny little boy.”

It emerged that the boy was treated in hospital and his stepfather jailed in Malaysia, where the clip was shot. The video, shared 44,000 times in the first two days of posting, remains online without a graphic content warning.

Facebook told Dispatches that it did escalate such issues and contact the authorities. It said that the video should have been removed.

Richard Allan, vice-president of public policy at Facebook, said: “Shocking content does not make us more money, that’s just a misunderstanding of how the system works … People come to Facebook for a safe, secure experience to share content with their family and friends. The vast majority of those two billion people would never dream of sharing content that, like that, to shock and offend people.”

Julian Knight, a Tory member of the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee, said the revelations were alarming but not surprising and criticised Facebook’s response to the MPs’ questions about extreme content.

In the documentary, to be shown in the UK tonight (Tuesday), Facebook bosses also admit that moderators are not allowed to take down pages with many followers, such as that of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, even if they breach its rules.

The Times