Thank you to Prithvi Iyer for covering our research on the failures of content moderation in the context of #TigrayGenocide and how to prevent genocidal speech from being proliferated by social media platforms.

https://www.techpolicy.press/what-a-new-study-reveals-about-content-moderation-in-tigray/

🗣️🗣️🗣️ Announcing new work from DAIR which is very close to my heart, 3 years in the making.

When #TigrayGenocide, the deadliest genocide of the 21st century thus far, started in November 2020, it was 1 month before I got fired from Google. Unlike Tigrayans whose sisters were being raped & parents murdered, I didn’t know exactly what was happening on the ground & who to believe. But I saw the genocidal speech targeting Tigrayans on social media, particularly from Eritreans, in Tigrinya. 🧵

Effective moderation of social media to curb genocidal content

"The 2020-2022 Tigray war is reported to be the deadliest armed conflict of the 21𝑠𝑡 century, with an estimated 600 to 800,000 documented deaths and more than 100 thousand victims of rape as a weapon of war. Social media platforms were instrumental in spreading genocidal content during the conflict, and failure to effectively moderate hateful content resulted in the murder of civilians. This work investigates the expertise and processes required to effectively moderate such genocidal content, and compares these findings to the expertise and processes prioritized by social media platforms."

@DAIR's page has a 10-minute video and a link to the CHI paper, and a statement - which I'll include excerpts from in a reply.

#moderation#tigraygenocide#tigray #genocide

In the midst of the shameful Ethiopian intellectuals who supported #TigrayGenocide, the worst genocide of the century thus far, with such unbelievable frenzy, I'm grateful for the few and far in between who collaborated with our friends at @whoseknowledge 🧵

https://whoseknowledge.org/concerning-tigray-and-internet-shutdowns/

At Rightscon? I’ll be talking about platform facilitated #TigrayGenocide with my co-panelists at 3:15pm @ 101c, a topic near & dear to my heart. Hear from my co-panelists who documented their people’s genocide, and learn about this topic that has been made invisible.

Social media & #TigrayGenocide is something @DAIR has been doing a ton of work on. Stay tuned for our CHI paper & short video on the topic.

Also on Wednesday, catch other DAIR people at these sessions.

➡️ At 9am in room 201D, Nyalleng is co-organizing, Size really does matter: rethinking AI development to avoid marginalizing the marginalized.

➡️ At 11:30am in room 102, Asmelash is participating in,
Putting people first: community-based approaches to accessible language technologies.