The world’s biggest social media company removed about 4.7 million posts connected to hate organizations on its flagship app in the first quarter, up from 1.6 million in the 2019 fourth quarter. It also deleted 9.6 million posts containing hate speech, compared with 5.7 million in the prior period. That marks a six-fold increase in hateful content removals since the second half of 2017, the earliest period for which Facebook discloses data. Improvements to that technology also enabled the proactive removal of more drug-related and sexually exploitative content, the company said. With fewer moderators available during the pandemic, Facebook has relied more on automated tools to police content as conspiracy theories about the coronavirus have spread online.

Source: Dhaka Tribune May 12, 2020 22:41 UTC