Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has put forward a pledge to gather 3,000 additional content reviewers and also invest in tools to help remove content going against community standards more swiftly for the social network. This comes after the streaming of shootings, rapes, murders and assaults that have gone on on the network over the last couple of months, with these live broadcasts still being viewable to users after being streamed. This is able to happen because what's actually relied on to scrutinise content is the 1.86 billion users and a team of people at Facebook which review reported posts, retroactively removing taking them down from the site. So with this, on top of the 4,500 deep team that is already there, Zuckerberg aims to add 3,000 over the next year 'to review the millions of reports we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly.' This year has seen the network come under fire for its inexpediency in taking down objectionable content. Videos such as the one of a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter and also the Cleveland murder of Robert Godwin are cases that brought around this criticism, with the former of which being available for 24 hours before being removed and the latter disseminating on other social networks like Twitter. This criticism has even extended as far as the Commons home affairs committee, with it complaining that 'social media companies currently face almost no penalties for failing to remove illegal content' and that sanctions should start to be developed against them for this.
- Facebook relies on reporting tools used by the social network’s 1.86 billion users and a team of people at Facebook to review reported posts and content and retroactively remove them from the site
- Two videos of a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter in April were available for 24 hours before being removed, and were viewed over 370,000 times
It appears that in the future, Facebook will see itself be a receiver of quite a hefty load of criticism whether it's from the people or even governments. First it was censorship, then it was fake news and now it's the speed at which they remove objectionable content. While Zuckerberg has made the pledge of introducing another 3,000 content reviewers to the network, he'll probably want to get this done quickly as the content just doesn't seem to stop rolling in. The more cases that come in that aren't put a stop to promptly, the more they'll come under this same fire that they have been throughout the year. Not only will they have to worry about the reaction of the general public to this, but also possible sanctions by governments which the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committees are aiming to put in place against them, as these will add to costs they incur - harming profit levels foe the company.
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