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Incident 197: Facebook Internally Reported Failure of Ranking Algorithm, Exposing Harmful Content to Viewers over Months

Description: Facebook's internal report showed an at-least six-month long alleged software bug that caused moderator-flagged posts and other harmful content to evade down-ranking filters, leading to surges of misinformation on users' News Feed.

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Alleged: Facebook developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Facebook users.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
197
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2021-10-01
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
GMF, 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
 

7.3. Lack of capability or robustness

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. AI system safety, failures, and limitations

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

Incident Occurrence+3
Facebook boosted harmful posts due to 'massive ranking failure' bug
Facebook boosted harmful posts due to 'massive ranking failure' bug

Facebook boosted harmful posts due to 'massive ranking failure' bug

protocol.com

A Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content over six months

A Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content over six months

theverge.com

Facebook system designed to smother harmful misinformation actually spread it

Facebook system designed to smother harmful misinformation actually spread it

thedrum.com

Meta admits Facebook bug led to a 'surge of misinformation'

Meta admits Facebook bug led to a 'surge of misinformation'

dailymail.co.uk

Facebook boosted harmful posts due to 'massive ranking failure' bug
protocol.com · 2022

For the last six months, Facebook engineers have been seeing intermittent spikes in misinformation and other harmful content on News Feed, with posts that would usually be demoted by the company's algorithms being boosted by as much as 30% …

A Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content over six months
theverge.com · 2022

A group of Facebook engineers identified a “massive ranking failure” that exposed as much as half of all News Feed views to potential “integrity risks” over the past six months, according to an internal report on the incident obtained by Th…

Facebook system designed to smother harmful misinformation actually spread it
thedrum.com · 2022

Facebook engineers have belatedly uncovered a significant flaw in its downranking system to filter out harmful content, which exposed up to half of all News Feed views to potential ’integrity risks’ for six months.

Reports in The Verge sugg…

Meta admits Facebook bug led to a 'surge of misinformation'
dailymail.co.uk · 2022

Meta has admitted that a Facebook bug led to a 'surge of misinformation' and other harmful content appearing in users' News Feeds between October and March.

According to an internal document, engineers at Mark Zuckerberg's firm failed to su…

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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