A bug that led to a “massive ranking failure” has left Facebook users exposed to harmful content.

First reported by The Verge, a group of Facebook engineers identified a bug that left as much as half of all News Feed views exposed to potential “integrity risks” when a surge of misinformation started flowing through it.

The bug meant that posts from repeat misinformation offenders were being distributed instead of suppressed, boosting views by as much as 30pc worldwide. According to an internal report on the incident seen by The Verge, the ranking issue was fixed on 11 March.

A spokesperson from Facebook’s parent company Meta confirmed the incident in a statement and said the bug “has not had any meaningful, long-term impact on our metrics”.

SiliconRepublic.com has reached out to Meta for comment.

A lack of warning labels

However, while this incident stemmed from a bug, another report points to issues with how harmful or misleading content is labelled.

According to The Guardian, a new study released by non-profit disinformation research group, Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the social media platform failed to label 80pc of posts promoting a bioweapons conspiracy theory as misinformation.

CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed said “conspiracy theories are given a free pass” in the majority of cases.

“If our researchers can identify false information about Ukraine openly circulating on its platform, it is within Meta’s capability to do the same,” he said.

This is not the first time the CCDH has identified shortcomings in the company’s labelling of false information.

A report from the non-profit in February found that many posts containing Russian propaganda about Ukraine did not carry any warning labels suggesting that it was misinformation.

In the study, CCDH researchers analysed a sample of 3,593 articles posted by outlets that have been identified as part of “Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem”, including RT.com and Sputnik News.

The researchers then used Facebook’s own CrowdTangle tool to identify more than 1,300 posts featuring the 100 most popular articles from this sample. Of these 1,300 posts, the researchers found that 91pc did not carry any warning labels.

Another CCDH report found that the social media platform had also failed to add misinformation warning labels to posts promoting articles from the world’s leading publishers of climate denial.

‘Err on the side of adult’

A third report, this one from The New York Times, has identified another issue when it comes to content moderation at Facebook.

While the company reports millions of photos and videos suspected of child abuse each year, The New York Times reports that when ages are unclear, content moderators have been instructed via a training document to “err on the side of adult”, which could lead to images and videos of child abuse to go unreported.

Antigone Davis, head of safety for Meta, confirmed the policy to The New York Times and said it stemmed from privacy concerns for those who post sexual imagery of adults.

Content moderation on the social media platform has been under scrutiny in recent years.

In 2018, a Channel 4 investigation revealed systemic failures to remove content flagged as inappropriate or recommended to be removed by users.

Following this, the content moderators themselves came into the spotlight, with many reports highlighting the impossible task they face, dubbing them ‘the silent heroes of the internet’.

With millions of new Facebook posts going live every minute, making snap judgements on moderating all of this content while being subjected to thousands of distressing images leads to serious struggles for those working in content moderation.

In December 2019 a group of moderators sought damages for personal injuries caused by exposure to graphic content while working on behalf of Facebook in Dublin.

In May 2020, Facebook agreed to pay a settlement of $52m to current and former content moderators who said they developed mental health issues from their work.

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