The American non-profit organization ProPublica had sent a sample of 49 items containing hate speech to Facebook recently. The social media giant responded apologetically and said that they “must do better.”
ProPublica sent the items along with several more with legitimate expressions from its database of 900 crowd-sourced posts. Facebook admitted the mistakes of its reviewers in 22 of the cases and blamed users for improper flagging of posts. In two more cases, it said it couldn’t respond to the lack of info received. Lastly, it defended 19 of its decisions.
Justin Osofsky, Facebook VP, said, “We’re sorry for the mistakes we have made.” He revealed that the company targets to recruit 20,000 people to its safety and security team by next year to improve as per community standards. He also added that the social media deletes about 66,000 posts per week that contain hate speech.
Facebook is further coming up with new tools to counter sensitive materials. Its efforts in keeping the platform as much user-friendly have been evident in its introduction of revenge porn back in April and features for blocking and avoiding harassers earlier this month. Users should remain hopeful for stricter measures that the platform could be coming up in the near future.
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