Facebook mistakenly labels black men 'primates'

Facebook says it has disabled its topic recommendation feature after it mistook Black men for "primates" in a video at the social network.

A Facebook spokesperson called it a "clearly unacceptable error" and said the recommendation software involved was taken offline.

"We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations," Facebook said on Friday. "We disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we realized this was happening."

Facial recognition software has been blasted by civil rights advocates who point out problems with accuracy, particularly regarding non-white people.

Facebook users in recent days who watched a British tabloid video featuring Black men were shown an auto-generated prompt asking if they would like to "keep seeing videos about Primates," according to the New York Times.

The June 2020 video in question, posted by the Daily Mail, is titled "White man calls cops on black men at marina."