Facebook downranking system failure
Occurred: March 2022
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Facebook has experienced a 'massive' failure of its content ranking system that exposed users to a surge of disinformation, hate speech and other harmful content, according an internal report obtained by The Verge.
The document attributes the failure to a software bug and says that posts that would usually have been demoted by the company's algorithms were boosted by as much as 30%.
A Facebook spokesman told The Verge the bug 'has not had any meaningful, long-term impact on our metrics.'
Operator: Meta/Facebook
Developer: Meta/Facebook
Country: USA; Global
Sector: Technology
Purpose: Minimise harmful content
Technology: Content ranking system
Issue: Robustness; Mis/disinformation
Transparency: Governance; Black box
News, commentary, analysis
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004326/facebook-news-feed-downranking-integrity-bug
https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/facebook-ranking-failure-bug
https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-news-feed-boosted-bad-posts-for-six-months-1848734620
https://www.bgr.in/news/facebook-bug-promoted-fake-news-on-news-feed-took-six-months-to-fix-1252956/
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/facebook-bug-promoted-posts-containing-200928176.html
https://siliconangle.com/2022/03/31/meta-news-feed-bug-increasing-views-sketchy-content-six-months/
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: March 2022