Facebook used to be a social media platform that pretty much the whole world loved to use in some way, but all of that changed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as a series of other privacy disasters that made people aware of just how dangerous a place the social media platform could be if left unchecked and unregulated.
One major problem that was being faced by Facebook had to do with how the platform was being used for the purposes of spreading hate speech and extremism. The whole purpose of the platform is to connect you to like minded people, but this purpose often ends up backfiring in spite of the fact that Facebook does not allow any kinds of hate speech or extremist content on its platform.
The reason that hate speech still thrives on the platform has a lot to do with the sheer quantity of posts that the platform sees day in and day out. Something will inevitably slip through the cracks, and the algorithm also has some imperfections that created loopholes allowing some forms of extremist content or hate speech to find several views and spread quite a lot before it was finally removed by the people over at the social media platform’s headquarters.
In order to combat this, Facebook is broadening the definition of extremism for its algorithm. The algorithm is also going to detect people that are searching for hate or extremism related content and would redirect them to a message that is attempting to reach out to them and ask them to reevaluate their usage of such content and involvement in such groups.
This extension of an olive branch might be a good way to help people overcome their extremist inclinations, although some would criticize this as Facebook focusing on the wrong sort of solution and avoiding the actual problem of spreading extremist content within their platform.
Read next: Once again Facebook is in the radar for playing with users privacy
One major problem that was being faced by Facebook had to do with how the platform was being used for the purposes of spreading hate speech and extremism. The whole purpose of the platform is to connect you to like minded people, but this purpose often ends up backfiring in spite of the fact that Facebook does not allow any kinds of hate speech or extremist content on its platform.
The reason that hate speech still thrives on the platform has a lot to do with the sheer quantity of posts that the platform sees day in and day out. Something will inevitably slip through the cracks, and the algorithm also has some imperfections that created loopholes allowing some forms of extremist content or hate speech to find several views and spread quite a lot before it was finally removed by the people over at the social media platform’s headquarters.
In order to combat this, Facebook is broadening the definition of extremism for its algorithm. The algorithm is also going to detect people that are searching for hate or extremism related content and would redirect them to a message that is attempting to reach out to them and ask them to reevaluate their usage of such content and involvement in such groups.
This extension of an olive branch might be a good way to help people overcome their extremist inclinations, although some would criticize this as Facebook focusing on the wrong sort of solution and avoiding the actual problem of spreading extremist content within their platform.
Read next: Once again Facebook is in the radar for playing with users privacy
