Facebook VP Says The Company Has “No Incentive” To Allow Hate Speech

Facebook is under tremendous pressure from advertisers to limit the spread of hate speech on its platform. The “Stop Hate for Profit” boycott is only gaining momentum, with more companies signing on by the day. That has forced the social media giant to publicly take accountability for its content moderation shortcomings — while still defending itself, too.

In a recent interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter, Facebook vice president for public affairs Nick Clegg pushed back against accusations that Facebook puts profit above protecting people, saying the company doesn’t have a reason to allow hate speech on its platform.

“We have absolutely no incentive to tolerate hate speech,” Clegg told CNN. “We don’t like it, our users don’t like it, advertisers understandably don’t like it… We benefit from positive human connection — not hate.”

However, Clegg also went on to note that Facebook is far from perfect when it comes to detecting and removing this content. “Unfortunately, zero tolerance doesn’t mean zero occurrence,” he said. “That’s why we constantly need to improve, implementing our policies, enforcing them so that we can seek out what, thankfully, is still a very small minority, but damaging minority, of content on the platform to make people feel safe.”

It’s a good thing that Facebook is being forced to reckon with its role in allowing hate speech to spread. However, the company is still frustratingly vague as to how it will actually accomplish this.




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