Meta may have gone too far when it came to moderating posts on Facebook and Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Global Affairs President Nick Clegg.
On Monday, Clegg said the company’s moderation practices were overzealous during a call with reporters, according to the Verge.
“We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable,” Clegg said. “Too often, harmless content gets taken down or restricted, and too many people get penalized unfairly.”
Meta relies on automated moderating services due to the volume of content that can appear across its social media apps, and these services often flag harmless posts as violating the company’s terms of service, Clegg said.
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Clegg said moderation, specifically during the pandemic, “overdid it a bit” with hindsight, but he said the company is determined to support its ideal of “free expression.”
“We had very stringent rules removing very large volumes of content through the pandemic,” Clegg said. “No one during the pandemic knew how the pandemic was going to unfold, so this really is wisdom in hindsight. But with that hindsight, we feel that we overdid it a bit. We’re acutely aware because users, quite rightly, raised their voice and complained that we sometimes over-enforce and we make mistakes and we remove or restrict innocuous or innocent content.”
