Facebook has taken some significant steps in order to make sure that its online community experiences a safe environment on its platform. Starting out of which among the list is hate speech, which has been a common occurrence throughout the internet.
People online tend to abuse and pass on rude comments to others while sitting in the safety of their homes and in front of the computer screen, without realizing their words can leave an impact. However rude people realize this or not, Facebook knows how hate speech and abusive comments can take a toll on their user’s mental health and the tech giant is working significantly hard in making sure that hate speech and symbols minimize on their platform and their efforts aren't going in vain.
The tech giant for the third time in its quarterly report, Community Standards Enforcement, showed a decrease in hate speech with only 5 views per 10000 views being hateful. However, while this can still add up to a big figure if you combine the results from the entire Facebook population but the decrease in numbers quarter after quarter is still a step right? Apart from that Instagram had managed to see some fairly low numbers in the same category as well which shows how well Facebook is incorporating all of its associated applications.
On the other hand, while hate speech and abuse has been minimized a drastic increase in suicidal and self-injury content was observed and when questioned about as to why were Facebook moderators allowing such triggering content on the application, Facebook announced that it was system default which led all such content get through the moderation however, the moderators are on it to remove triggering suicidal and self-injury content as well. The tech giant wanted users to know that their main focus is a healthy and happy environment on the platform and that they will take all measures to ensure it.
The issue of fake profiles is something that has always been common on Facebook and while the tech giant claimed they have managed to remove 1.7 billion fake profiles up until now the statistics of fake profile has remained at 5 percent for ages now. However, this only means that Facebook has a lot of fake profiles and while the tech giant managed to bring some down, others new one’s pop up soon after.
However, while all these efforts are great the rising tension of Facebook since the past year and a half has been the ongoing pandemic. While the whole world fought the pandemic, Facebook had another thing to fight for and that was to stop the spread of misinformation of Covid19 from its platform and later about the vaccine roll out too.
Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) accused Facebook of not showing enough efforts in controlling the misinformation related to vaccine and Covid itself. It claimed that two third of all misinformed posts on Facebook tied down to 12 accounts which were the upper hand in spreading misinformation. Apart from this the CEO of CCDH also claimed that Facebook didn't portray all of its data and hid the numbers on how many people were exposed to such misinformed content.
Facebook however, took all this under consideration and has shown a splendid result in its second quarterly report of 2021. In the report Facebook mentioned that they have limited the occurrence of posts from these 12 accounts on any group or timelines and have managed to bring down hundreds of posts which contained misinformation regarding the vaccine or the virus. Apart from this the tech giant had labelled some posts which it thought were not correct with a warning status as well claiming that such content information has not been approved by the WHO. Zuckerberg in an interview stated that the company had seen and taken down 18 million of misinformation posts in the past year, however when questioned about how many people had seen this 18 million posts and were convinced on not getting the vaccine, the CEO dodged the question with his claim that Facebook had helped in convincing a lot of people to take the necessary precautions and to get vaccinated as well.
Read next: Study finds that people overusing Facebook may have a higher risk of depression
People online tend to abuse and pass on rude comments to others while sitting in the safety of their homes and in front of the computer screen, without realizing their words can leave an impact. However rude people realize this or not, Facebook knows how hate speech and abusive comments can take a toll on their user’s mental health and the tech giant is working significantly hard in making sure that hate speech and symbols minimize on their platform and their efforts aren't going in vain.
The tech giant for the third time in its quarterly report, Community Standards Enforcement, showed a decrease in hate speech with only 5 views per 10000 views being hateful. However, while this can still add up to a big figure if you combine the results from the entire Facebook population but the decrease in numbers quarter after quarter is still a step right? Apart from that Instagram had managed to see some fairly low numbers in the same category as well which shows how well Facebook is incorporating all of its associated applications.
On the other hand, while hate speech and abuse has been minimized a drastic increase in suicidal and self-injury content was observed and when questioned about as to why were Facebook moderators allowing such triggering content on the application, Facebook announced that it was system default which led all such content get through the moderation however, the moderators are on it to remove triggering suicidal and self-injury content as well. The tech giant wanted users to know that their main focus is a healthy and happy environment on the platform and that they will take all measures to ensure it.
The issue of fake profiles is something that has always been common on Facebook and while the tech giant claimed they have managed to remove 1.7 billion fake profiles up until now the statistics of fake profile has remained at 5 percent for ages now. However, this only means that Facebook has a lot of fake profiles and while the tech giant managed to bring some down, others new one’s pop up soon after.
However, while all these efforts are great the rising tension of Facebook since the past year and a half has been the ongoing pandemic. While the whole world fought the pandemic, Facebook had another thing to fight for and that was to stop the spread of misinformation of Covid19 from its platform and later about the vaccine roll out too.
Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) accused Facebook of not showing enough efforts in controlling the misinformation related to vaccine and Covid itself. It claimed that two third of all misinformed posts on Facebook tied down to 12 accounts which were the upper hand in spreading misinformation. Apart from this the CEO of CCDH also claimed that Facebook didn't portray all of its data and hid the numbers on how many people were exposed to such misinformed content.
Facebook however, took all this under consideration and has shown a splendid result in its second quarterly report of 2021. In the report Facebook mentioned that they have limited the occurrence of posts from these 12 accounts on any group or timelines and have managed to bring down hundreds of posts which contained misinformation regarding the vaccine or the virus. Apart from this the tech giant had labelled some posts which it thought were not correct with a warning status as well claiming that such content information has not been approved by the WHO. Zuckerberg in an interview stated that the company had seen and taken down 18 million of misinformation posts in the past year, however when questioned about how many people had seen this 18 million posts and were convinced on not getting the vaccine, the CEO dodged the question with his claim that Facebook had helped in convincing a lot of people to take the necessary precautions and to get vaccinated as well.
Read next: Study finds that people overusing Facebook may have a higher risk of depression
