Objectionable Content On Facebook On The Rise, More Sex And Violence Being Filtered

It was only inevitable that a platform as large as Facebook would have its fair share of users who post inappropriate content on the site. Whenever the social network notices these contents, it immediately moves in to filter it, often before it even becomes visible to most people. It seems these kinds of incidents are on the rise and Facebook just provided proof of how much it has been protecting users from them all this time.

According to a recent report released by Facebook, the company has been filtering more and more objectionable content on the platform. Releasing these details is also part of the social media giant’s attempt to be more transparent following the numerous scandals that it has been dealing with. Based on its measurements, for example, violent content has risen compared to last year.

“An estimate of 0.22% to 0.27% of views were of content that violated our standards for graphic violence in Q1 2018. This increased from an estimate of 0.16% to 0.19% in Q4 2017,” the report reads. “In other words, of every 10,000 content views, an estimate of 22 to 27 contained graphic violence, compared to an estimate of 16 to 19 last quarter.

“This percentage increased despite improvements in our detection technology in Q1 2018. The increase was likely due to a higher volume of graphic violence content shared on Facebook.”

It would seem that Facebook will be updating these numbers every six months so that outsiders can take a look at the figures, as well. Results do seem to vary, however, with posts promoting terrorism being detected 95 percent of the time but with hate speech only being detected 38 percent of the time.

Facebook has about 10,000 people working on detecting and reviewing these posts, WIRED notes. This number could go up to 20,000 by the end of 2018 to make the process more expedient.