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Facebook’s first content moderation report finds terrorism posts up 73 percent this year

Facebook’s first content moderation report finds terrorism posts up 73 percent this year

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Artificial intelligence is helping clean up older posts, the company says

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Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Facebook took enforcement action on 1.9 million posts related to terrorism by Al Qaeda and ISIS in the first quarter of this year, the company said, up from 1.1 million posts in the last quarter of 2018. The increased enforcement, which typically results in posts being removed and accounts being suspended or banned from Facebook, resulted from improvements in machine learning that allowed the company to find more terrorism-related photos, whether they were newly uploaded or had been on Facebook for longer.

Facebook found 99.5 percent of terrorism-related posts before they were flagged by users, it said. In the previous quarter, 97 percent of posts were found by the company on its own. Facebook made the data available as part of its first ever Community Standards Enforcement Report, which documents content moderation actions taken by the company between October and March.

Other findings in the report include:

Graphic violence. Posts that included graphic violence represented from 0.22 percent to 0.27 percent of views, up from 0.16 to 0.19 percent in the previous quarter. The company took action on 3.4 million posts, up from 1.2 million in the previous quarter. It said violent posts appeared to have risen in conjunction with the intensifying conflict in Syria.

Nudity and sex. Posts with nudity or sexual activity represented 0.07 to 0.09 percent of views, up from 0.06 to 0.08 percent in the previous quarter. The company took action on 21 million posts, about the same as the previous quarter.

Facebook took action on 2.5 million posts for violating hate speech rules, up 56 percent from the previous quarter

Hate speech. Facebook took action on 2.5 million posts for violating hate speech rules, up 56 percent from the previous quarter. Users reported 62 percent of hate speech posts before Facebook took action on them.

Spam. Facebook took action on 837 million spam posts, up 15 percent from the previous quarter. The company says it detected “nearly 100 percent” of spam posts before users could report them.

Fake accounts. Of Facebook’s monthly users, 3 to 4 percent are fake accounts, the company said. It removed 583 million fake accounts in the first quarter of the year, down from 694 million in the previous quarter.

The data, which the company plans to issue at least twice a year, “is a move toward holding ourselves accountable,” Facebook said in its report. “This guide explains our methodology so the public can understand the benefits and limitations of the numbers we share, as well as how we expect these numbers to change as we refine our methodologies. We’re committed to doing better, and communicating more openly about our efforts to do so, going forward.”

The company is still working to develop accurate metrics that describe how often hate speech is seen on the platform, said Guy Rosen, a vice president of product management, in an interview with reporters. The company’s machine-learning systems have trouble identifying hate speech because computers have trouble understanding the context around speech.

There’s a lot of really tricky cases.”

“There’s a lot of really tricky cases,” Rosen said. “Is a slur being used to attack someone? Is it being used self-referentially? Or is it a completely innocuous term when it’s used in a different context?” The final decisions on hate speech are made by human moderators, he added.

Still, people post millions of unambiguously hateful posts to Facebook. In March, the United Nations said Facebook was responsible for spreading hatred of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Facebook’s lack of moderators who speak the local language has hampered it in its effort to reduce the spread of hate speech. “We definitely have to do more to make sure we pay attention to those,” Rosen said, noting that the company had recently hired more moderators in the area.

The enforcement report arrives a month after Facebook made its community standards public for the first time. The standards document what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook, and serves as a guide for Facebook’s global army of content moderators.

Facebook is releasing its enforcement report at a time when the company is under increasing pressure to reduce hate speech, violence, and misinformation on its platform. Under pressure from Congress, Facebook has said it will double its safety and security team to 20,000 people this year.