Mediaboss Marketing

New Delhi, June 29: The rise of social networking, especially with the penetration of the internet among all people must create an imagery where each human being is connected to the other in harmony. But then the dark side of the social networking does lurk behind every such positive trait and as a new report suggests, social networking giant Facebook has to remove more than 66,000 hateful posts per week, to make sure that utopian human harmony is maintained.

According to the US-based company, tracking the trend in the last two months, they have removed on an average 66,000 hateful posts per week while monitoring posts which might have been flagged off by other users. Notably, Facebook, and other social networking sites do have an option for the users to report any post they deem offensive, which after being monitored and examined is removed if found violating user terms and conditions.

Disclosing the information on Tuesday while talking about its various methods to control other issues like fake news, Vice President of Public Policy for Europe, Middle East and Africa stated in a post that they are opposed to hate speech in all forms. We are opposed to hate speech in all its forms and dont allow it on our platform, VP Richard Allen said reinstating their opposition to hate speech.

Clarifying as to what qualifies as hate speech, he said, Our definition of hate speech is anything that directly attacks people on their protected characteristics race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, or serious disability or disease.

However, it has been agreed by the social networking giant that sometimes the fine line between what is a hate speech and what is not is pretty blurred, which creates a problem in arriving at a consensus as to if a post is indeed a hateful one or not. According them, in such cases, a team internally reviews such posts and take a decision whether to take it down or not.

There have been speculations regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in filtering the content on Facebook, but they clearly stated that although such a step would be really convenient but they are still reliant on users reporting posts as such an AI has not been yet successfully developed. On this Allen said, While were investing in these promising advances, were a long way from being able to rely on machine learning and AI to handle the complexity involved in assessing hate speech.

(With agency inputs)

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Social, Anti-Social networking: Facebook Inc. removes over 66000 hate-speech posts per week - India.com