Facebook apologises after it mistakenly labels dark men as 'primates'

By Team Newsable | First Published Sep 4, 2021, 11:46 AM IST

Darci Groves, a former Facebook content design manager, brought the issue to light by tweeting images of the recommendation.

The social media giant Facebook stopped its subject recommendation function on Friday after it mistook dark males for "primates" in a video on the social network. According to a Facebook representative, it was an "obviously unacceptable error," and the recommendation programme involved was taken down. As a result, the social media site apologised to anyone who may have come across these inappropriate suggestions. It said that they deactivated the entire subject suggestion tool as soon as they noticed what was going on to examine the source and prevent it from happening again. Facebook has also launched an inquiry into the issue.

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Civil rights groups have slammed facial recognition software, pointing out difficulties with accuracy, particularly for persons of colour. According to the media reports, Facebook users who watched a British tabloid video depicting dark males in recent days were sent an auto-generated popup asking if they wanted to "keep viewing films about Primates."

A British-daily provided the video date of June 27, 2020. It depicted a fight between Black males and white police officers. Darci Groves, a former Facebook content design manager, brought the issue to light by tweeting images of the recommendation.

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In other news, Facebook CEO David Marcus hinted at the company's intention to enter the market, saying, "We're looking at the number of ways to become engaged in the area because we think we're in a really excellent position to do so."

However, Facebook is hardly the first social media firm to dabble in NFTs. Earlier this year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first ever Tweet for $2.9 million as NFT to collect cash for COVID-19 assistance.

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