Meta, that big tech company, got slammed for not acting fast enough when folks were posting violent things online during the UK riots. According to some report, some girls got killed in Southport, and then on Facebook and stuff, people started spreading lies that the killer was Muslim. Some folks on social media were all about the violence and chaos, and it went on for like nine days from July 30 to August 7. The cops busted over 1,280 people for getting involved in the mess, says the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
Now, the big bosses at Meta’s oversight board are saying they’re super worried about how Meta deals with all the hate and violent stuff online. They’re saying Meta took way too long to set up a plan for handling emergencies and didn’t like how Mark Zuckerberg suddenly changed some rules in January. Paolo Carozza from the board told Sky News they’re clueless about a community notes system.
During the riots, there were some seriously messed up posts that Meta’s computers missed, even though regular people flagged them. One post was calling for mosques to be wrecked and buildings where “migrants” and “terrorists” lived to be torched. The board said this was a big no-no. Another post showed a massive dude in a Union Jack shirt chasing small Muslim guys, pushing people to join a protest. Meta’s board thought this was a call to violent discrimination. But the Meta folks thought it was all good since it didn’t target anyone. The board called out Meta for showing a fake image of Muslim men after the Southport tragedy. They said it didn’t have anything to do with what really happened.
During all this craziness last summer, Meta made a special team to hunt down and delete lots of posts that broke the rules. They said they’d follow whatever the board decided after. The board dug through a bunch of posts to see how Meta manages content online. They thought a few posts were cool to stay online, even if they were super rude to the trans community. Mr. Carozza said we gotta figure out where it’s okay to mess up and where it’s not when it comes to free speech. We gotta lean towards letting folks speak up more, I guess.
