Google Sister Company Using SPLC DATA to Develop Comment Moderation Engine

Jigsaw, the Alphabet subsidiary that began as the Google Ideas think tank, has been utilizing Southern Poverty Law Center datasets in the development of their Perspective API, a comment moderation engine, documents shared with The Daily Caller indicate.

Three sets of comments from Breitbart, The Daily Stormer and Stormfront were provided to Jigsaw by the SPLC and have been identified both in internal company memos and code for the API. The latter two are neo-Nazi websites.

These datasets were provided in raw form to Jigsaw, meaning that the embattled Montgomery nonprofit is assisting the development of a Google comment moderation product intended to be applied across a wide swath of the media. It also represents confirmation that the SPLC has been scraping wholesale the content of far-right websites.

The Perspective API is “part of the Conversation AI research effort that aims to help increase empathy, participation and quality in online conversation at scale,” according to its Github description, and was originally known as the Respect Engine within the company.