Facebook eliminated 7 million posts promoting hate speech in Q3, up from 4.4 million in the previous quarter. The company defines hate speech as dehumanizing language, statement of inferiority, insults or calls for exclusion or segregation based on protected characteristics including race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease.
“In recent years, using machine learning, we have developed detection technology that can find and flag hate speech using several different methods,” according to the social network giant.
In the third quarter, Facebook also deleted 3.2 million posts that violated its policies against bullying and harassment as well as 5.2 million contents promoting terrorism.
During a press conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, ” “We are going to keep publishing these reports so people can see the scale of these issues and hold us accountable for improving our system.” He added, “We are making some real progress here, but our systems aren’t perfect and being transparent helps us keep pressure on ourselves to always keep doing better.”
