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Facebook Claims Hate Speech Has Decreased By Nearly 50% On Its Newsfeeds
By Alexa Heah, 18 Oct 2021
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Image via Mercigod / Shutterstock.com
Facebook has had a busy few weeks, from a whistleblower testifying before authorities to a massive blackout and a leak of how it plans to stop leaks, it’s been itching to release some news that could lend a few plus points to its empire.
Now, the social media platform claims, per its company website, that it reduced the amount of hate speech on its newsfeeds by nearly 50% over the last three quarters. Only 0.05% percent of its content is made up of hateful content, with the number set to come down even more as it introduced a new slew of policies to protect public figures last week.
Source: Facebook
The tech giant said it has been making use of algorithms that detect hateful content, which will then refer it to the site’s review team to be removed if deemed inappropriate.
According to SlashGear, Facebook’s Vice-President of Integrity, Guy Rosen, said that leaked documents reported by The Wall Street Journal had misrepresented the company’s efforts. He said monitoring hate speech was the firm’s “most important metric.”
“Data pulled from leaked documents is being used to create a narrative that the technology we use to fight hate speech is inadequate and that we deliberately misrepresent our progress. This is not true,” he said.
“We don’t want to see hate on our platform, nor do our users or advertisers, and we are transparent about our work to remove it. What these documents demonstrate is that our integrity work is a multi-year journey.”
[via Facebook and SlashGear, cover image via Mercigod / Shutterstock.com]
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