Facebook has announced this Friday that it has disabled a recommendation function of topics after mistakenly associate black men with “primates” in a video published in the social network.
A spokesman for the company has called it “a clearly unacceptable mistake” and says that the recommendation software involved has been disconnected.
“We apologized with anyone who has seen these offensive recommendations,” Facebook answered when consulted by AFP.
“We have disabled all the recommendation function of topics as soon as we have realized that this was happening and thus be able to investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again.”
The facial recognition program has been harshly criticized by civil rights defenders, who point out accurate problems particularly with people who are not white.
The video of a British tabloid starring black men has received numerous complaints in recent days, after receiving thousands of users a report generated automatically asking if they wanted to “continue watching videos about primates,” reports The New York Times.
Darci Groves, former Facebook content design chief, has shared a screenshot of the recommendation.
“This notice of ‘keep watching’ is unacceptable,” Groves written on Twitter.
“This is atrocious.”
