Facebook Takes Down Topic Recommendation Feature After Black Men Labelled As 'Primates'

<p><strong>New Delhi:&nbsp;</strong>Facebook came under fire yet again on Friday after its topic recommendation feature mistook Black men for "primates" in a video. In the past as well, facial recognition software has been criticized by civil rights advocates due to its inaccuracy when it comes to people who aren't white.&nbsp;</p> <p>Due to this inaccuracy, many people of colour have been arrested wrongly as was used for investigations by the police.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>ALSO READ: <span style="color: #e03e2d;"><a style="color: #e03e2d;" href="https://ift.tt/3yEtUyh Covid-19 Variant: 10 Things That We Know About The Latest WHO &lsquo;Variant Of Interest&rsquo;</a></span><br /></strong></p> <p>"We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations," Facebook told AFP.</p> <p>According to a New York Times report, Facebook users who watched a British tabloid video featuring Black men received an auto-generated prompt asking if they would like to "keep seeing videos about Primates".&nbsp;</p> <p>"We disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we realized this was happening so we could investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again," Facebook further told AFP.&nbsp;</p> <p>Humans are among primate family but this particular video had nothing to do with monkeys, chimpanzees or gorillas.</p> <p>Former design manager, Darci Groves took to Twitter to point out the prompt.&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">Um. This &ldquo;keep seeing&rdquo; prompt is unacceptable, <a href="https://twitter.com/Facebook?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Facebook</a>. And despite the video being more than a year old, a friend got this prompt yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. This is egregious. <a href="https://t.co/vEHdnvF8ui">pic.twitter.com/vEHdnvF8ui</a></p> &mdash; Darci Groves (@tweetsbydarci) <a href="https://twitter.com/tweetsbydarci/status/1433492516439932930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 2, 2021</a></blockquote> <p> <script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" async="" charset="utf-8"></script> </p> <p>"This is egregious," she wrote.&nbsp;</p>