Facebook is often dinged here in the US for its content moderation practices, allowing hate speech and other offensive content to spread. However, that problem becomes even worse overseas where the social media giant isn’t as familiar with cultural norms. This week, an Aboriginal group in Australia slammed Facebook for not controlling hate speech, urging the company to “start taking responsibility” for what happens on its platform.

While Facebook enlists content moderators who are familiar with local norms and customs to help it crack down on hate speech abroad, this is a far from perfect system, and the company hasn’t invested as much in other countries as it has in the US. That leads to confusing and potentially harmful incidents like this, when an Aboriginal group was told by Facebook that hate speech didn’t violate its policies.

“When we’ve reported these posts to Facebook, we’re told this behavior doesn’t go against Facebook’s community standards,” the group said.

“Perhaps Facebook needs to have a little bit of cultural awareness in that space to understand that what they’re saying isn’t racist and doesn’t breach community standards, perhaps not in America but actually does here in Australia,” said Amy Rust, the group’s head of communications.

While Facebook doesn’t intentionally allow this kind of content to spread, it’s also clear that the company isn’t able to police it as effectively as it needs to.

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