Digital Economy and Society Minister Chaichanok Chidchob doubts Meta's algorithm excuse for the prolonged and repeated dissemination of sex videos on Facebook over the weekend.
Mr Chaichanok was answering reporters questions on Monday.
He said that Meta, which owns Facebook, informed his ministry that whoever disseminated the sexual intercourse videos that spread for hours on Saturday and Sunday seemed to have evaded screening out by its AI by inserting legitimate content at intervals during the streaming. The AI assumed the content was legitimate.
Such “legitimate content” included pictures of people having conversations and women wearing masks.
Mr Chaichanok said the explanation was not convincing because the explicit sex content continued to be disseminated for six to eight hours. His ministry had demanded in-depth information from Meta to verify the excuse.
The videos of people indulging in sexual activity were streamed several times and were highly visible to watchers on Facebook.
He said three Facebook users released the sexual content on Saturday and two other users did the same on Sunday. The content reached more than 1 million viewers, he said.
Mr Chaichanok quoted Meta as reporting that its AI could screen out 95% of illegal content.
“Although only five percent is not detected, if the content affects large numbers of people and appears for hours, it certainly causes great damage,” the minister said. “Meta must prove that it complies with the law and its AI effectively blocks illegal content.”
He would improve relevant regulations to require such platform operators to remove illegal content immediately, instead of within 24 hours, and to hold such operators responsible for damaging content.
Mr Chaichanok said the people who clicked “Like” or commented on the explicit content might not be prosecuted because their action did not directly spread the content.
Pol Lt Gen Trairong Phiwphan, the national police spokesman, said the people in the videos might not be Thai, and it might not have been "live" as initially reported.
“It might be the streaming of a video recorded off another screen… there were large numbers of viewers over a short time and maybe the algorithm judged it to be popular content and automatically pushed it to a larger audience,” he said.
In one sense, the sexual content might have been directed at viewers in Thailand. On the other it might have been released worldwide. But when Thai users or page administrators with many followers saw it, the content could have spread rapidly and gone viral, the police spokesman said.
Pol Gen Trairong said that if police identify those responsible they could seek arrest warrants and ask for international cooperation in apprehending them.
