Meta apologized to some Palestinian Instagram users after including the word “terrorist” in their bio, stressing that it was an error in automatic translation.
The technical problem appeared among some users who wrote the word “Palestinian” in English on their personal files and used emojis of the Palestinian flag, according to the website of the British newspaper The Guardian.
When one of the phrases was automatically translated into English, it read: “Praise be to God, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.”
A Meta spokesman confirmed that the problem had been resolved, saying: “We have fixed an issue that briefly caused inappropriate Arabic translations to appear in some of our products,” adding: “We sincerely apologize for this.”
Fahd Ali, secretary of the Australian Electronic Frontier Organization, a Palestinian residing in Sydney, said there was not enough transparency from Meta about how this was allowed to happen.
He continued: “There is real concern about the creep of these digital biases,” noting the need to know the source of this.
He asked: “Does it stem from the level of automation?” Is it stemming from a problem in the training set? Does it stem from the human factor in these tools?”, stressing that “there is no clarity in that.”
He explained, “This is what we must seek to address,” expressing his hope that Meta will clarify the matter further.
A former Facebook employee with access to discussions among current Meta employees said that this problem has pushed many people to the brink, internally and externally.
Since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel, Meta has been accused of censoring posts supporting Palestine on its platforms.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Meta said that new measures had been taken since the war between Hamas and Israel began, “to address the significant increase in potentially harmful content spread on the platform,” denying the suppression of anyone’s voice.
The company justified some of what happened as an error that led to re-shared clips and posts not appearing in people’s Instagram stories, which led to a significant decrease in reach, pointing out that the glitch was not limited to posts related to Gaza.
2023-10-21 14:51:27
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