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Incident 359: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Cited Errors in Automated Systems as Cause for Blocking pro-Palestinian Content on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Description: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter wrongly blocked or restricted millions of pro-Palestinian posts and accounts related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, citing errors in their automated content moderation system.

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Alleged: Facebook , Instagram and Twitter developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Palestinian social media users , Facebook users , Instagram users , Twitter Users and Facebook employees having families affected by the conflict.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
359
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2021-05-23
Editors
Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

1.1. Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Discrimination and Toxicity

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.Incident Occurrence
Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.

washingtonpost.com

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.
washingtonpost.com · 2021

Just days after violent conflict erupted in Israel and the Palestinian territories, both Facebook and Twitter copped to major faux pas: The companies had wrongly blocked or restricted millions of mostly pro-Palestinian posts and accounts re…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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