Secret guidelines used by social media giant Facebook to censor hate speech are resulting in lesbians being blocked and banned for referring to themselves as "dykes", with one expert suggesting early adoption of artificial intelligence software may be to blame.

Liz Waterhouse, who runs the blog listening2lesbians with her partner Lisa Mallett, said they noticed women started being banned this year, with a sharp escalation in June.

Ms Waterhouse herself has been blocked a number of times for using the term in pro-lesbian ways, and fears she may soon be banned altogether.

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She is worried the social media giant's actions will result in vulnerable minority communities being silenced online.

"It's really critical that we have unimpeded access to social media platforms," Ms Waterhouse said.

"[For] women who may not get any kind of validation or support or advocacy in their area, it can be quite critical for them to see that it is possible to be positive about being lesbian, it is possible to change social attitudes."

Ms Waterhouse said the term had evolved from the original pejorative meaning to just being used in everyday conversation by lesbians, about lesbians.

She wants Facebook to investigate the practices of the content reviewers responsible for carrying out bans and deletions, including those based in countries with conservative approaches to gay and lesbian issues, to determine if any employees are showing a bias against women and lesbians.

According to Ms Waterhouse, since the ABC made contact with Facebook, some content has been restored.

Dykes on Bikes face online roadblock

Dykes on Bikes Queensland president Julz Raven says she tried repeatedly to contact Facebook, but received no response. ( Supplied: Julz Raven )

The Queensland chapter of Mardi Gras staple Dykes on Bikes had their Facebook page banned after years of operation.

President Julz Raven said she was one of the first chapters in Australia to set up a Facebook page, but a couple of years ago it was suddenly deactivated, with a message saying it did not meet the US social media giant's community standards.

She said she had tried repeatedly to contact Facebook, but received no response.

Ms Raven agreed while the term was once used in a derogatory way, its meaning had completely changed.

"We've got members in their 60s, and they say about 10 to 15 years ago it sort of started to change, and that it became internally quite a positive thing," she said.

Dykes on Bikes Queensland have had to change their page's facebook name to 'Dy kes on Bikes' to pass the censors.

Community standards remain hidden

Facebook, which recently announced it had reached 2 billion users worldwide, publishes limited details around what content is permissible in relation to slurs.

A recent investigation by not-for-profit investigative news outlet Pro Publica revealed internal documents that Facebook's internal censors use to differentiate hate speech from political expression.

According to the documents, Facebook designates "protected categories", but these do not include religion, social class, age, appearance, occupation and continental origin.

According to its publicly available community standards, it removes hate speech including content that attacks people based on:

Race

Race Ethnicity

Ethnicity National origin

National origin Religious affiliation

Religious affiliation Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation Sex, gender, or gender identity, or

Sex, gender, or gender identity, or Serious disabilities or diseases

Artificial intelligence harnessed in fight against hate speech

A spokesman for Facebook said posts were only reviewed by content moderation teams when they were reported by other users.

He said the company conducted regular audits on the quality and accuracy of reviewer decisions so that they could continue to improve their processes.

A June 27 statement from Facebook's vice president for public policy Richard Allen on content moderation, said Facebook considered the context and country of where potentially offensive terms were used.

According to Mr Allen, they also consider intent.

"When someone uses an offensive term in a self-referential way, it can feel very different from when the same term is used to attack them," he wrote.

"For example, the use of the word 'dyke' may be considered hate speech when directed as an attack on someone on the basis of the fact that they are gay.

"However, if someone posted a photo of themselves with '#dyke', it would be allowed."

But he conceded mistakes were made.

"Our mistakes have caused a great deal of concern in a number of communities, including among groups who feel we act — or fail to act — out of bias," he wrote.

"We are deeply committed to addressing and confronting bias anywhere it may exist."

Facebook said its content review teams were global.

Countries such as India, the Philippines, and Poland have booming tech industries catering to this need, with firms providing the army of workers required to filter and moderate content in the social media space.

Mr Allen said Facebook was experimenting with ways to harness artificial intelligence to filter "toxic language" in comments.

"But while we're continuing to invest in these promising advances, we're a long way from being able to rely on machine learning and AI to handle the complexity involved in assessing hate speech," he said.

Facebook have also given strong support to Pride events, recently adding a rainbow reaction option for Pride month, and adding Pride-themed masks and frames to their camera options.

'There is no accountability'

University of Sydney senior lecturer in convergent and online media , Dr Fiona Martin, said there was no transparency from social media corporations about how their algorithms filtered content on the basis of words or word clusters.

"If you think about the way the traditional media work, there are very transparent forms of legislation ... that we have developed in Parliament that we can all look at and that can be debated in court," she said.

"There is accountability."

She questioned whether the industry's recent push to adopt artificial intelligence software may be affecting the way context of language was being evaluated.

"One of the problems I have with the current forms of AI software that are available, that I've seen in operation, is they're not very strong on context," she said.

"They have so many billions of users posting, that is very difficult to moderate that language use.

"So they're using automatic filters to pick up on words that might be seen as offensive in some contexts."