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Pattern Matching
How Facebook Can Prevent Its Next Deadly ‘Operational Mistake’
If Zuckerberg cares at all about the platform’s impact, he should stop outsourcing content moderation now
Welcome back to Pattern Matching, OneZero’s weekly newsletter that puts the week’s most compelling tech stories in context.
On the morning of August 25, a self-proclaimed militia group on Facebook called Kenosha Guard put out a public call for people to “take up arms” and defend the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, from “evil thugs” — that is, people protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, two days earlier. Responses rolled in throughout the day, including ones like, “I fully plan to kill looters and rioters tonight,” according to an investigation published Thursday by BuzzFeed News.
Horrified Facebook users flagged the event to the company at least 455 times, BuzzFeed reported — and Facebook moderators replied that it didn’t violate the platform’s rules. They left it up, and that evening, two protesters were shot and killed after clashes with militia-style groups of young men with rifles. (It isn’t yet clear whether the gunman was inspired by the Facebook group specifically or heard about the event through some other channel.)
