Facebook Screeners Reportedly Did Not Look for Election Propaganda
Facebook has admitted to ads bought by "inauthentic" accounts that may have been connected to the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections. While the social media platform remained light on the details, former Facebook employees described the ad review process as a system with "no quality metric."
As a special investigation looks into the possible role that Facebook played in spreading propaganda from an alleged involvement of Russia in the 2016 elections, the social media platform remains hesitant to provide more details on how these political ads were bought.
Four former workers from Facebook described the ad review process to The Verge, and the way the platform started by Mark Zuckerberg valued speed and volume. The system looks to be geared towards explicit hate speech and sexual content, rather than the more subtle ads aimed at "amplifying divisive social and political messages."
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When asked about the ads reportedly bought for the Russia campaign, one of the tipsters noted that "it's not hard to do." Three of these four ex-employees were onboard during the time these political ads were disseminated on Facebook, between June 2015 and May 2017, according to Engadget.
The ad review process was said to be largely operated by contractors in India and the United States, with the hiring of the moderators outsourced to a third party and ran as a separate group from the Facebook operation at large. Most screeners worked for about $18 an hour.
These moderators did not review a complete ad, they said. The ads were instead chopped up into images and pieces of texts, which were then farmed out to the screeners through separate queues.
Based on what they see from the ad fragments on their screen, the workers will then punch in tags that describe their quick impression. These contractors are expected to screen thousands of these ad fragments every day.
"There was no quality metric that I guess we had," a former worker said.
The workers also said that Facebook may be using their inputs to train an algorithm to screen ads, raising concerns that the social media platform might be leaving some of its ad reviews to machines.
Facebook has not commented about its ad review system for now, in relation to possible ads from Russia used in the 2016 election campaign.
