Facebook pulled or slapped warnings on nearly 30 million posts containing sexual or violent images, terrorist propaganda or hate speech in the first three months of 2018, the social media giant said Tuesday.
In an unprecedented report responding to calls for transparency after the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, Facebook detailed its actions against such content in line with its “community standards”.
Facebook said improved technology using artificial intelligence had helped it act on 3.4 million posts containing graphic violence, nearly three times more than it had in the last quarter of 2017.
In 85.6% of the cases, Facebook detected the images before being alerted to them by users, said the report, issued the day after the company said “around 200” apps had been suspended on its platform as part of an investigation into misuse of private user data.
The figure represents between 0.22 and 0.27% of the total content viewed by Facebook’s more than two billion users from January through March.
“In other words, of every 10,000 content views, an estimate of 22 to 27 contained graphic violence,” the report said.
Responses to rule violations include removing content, adding warnings to content that may be disturbing to some users while not violating Facebook standards; and notifying law enforcement in case of a “specific, imminent and credible threat to human life”.
