REPORT: Facebook Removed 2.5 Million Pieces of “Hate Speech” In Just Three Months

REPORT: Facebook Removed 2.5 Million Pieces of “Hate Speech” In Just Three Months

by Lucian Wintrich
May 15, 2018

In a just-released report from Facebook’s VP of Product Management, it was revealed that Facebook removed a shocking amount of content in just the first quarter of 2018 alone.

After widespread criticism of the social network, Zuckerberg’s company was forced into more transparency. The newly-released report shows that Facebook removed a staggering 2.5 million pieces of “hate speech” from their network in just the past three months.

38% of the content removed was done through the companies automated algorithms while the bulk, 62%, was left to be flagged and manually removed by humans (and we all know how unbiased humans are). The nonsensical term hate speech, as many know, has no real definition; it is highly subjective and rests at the hands of whatever human might come across it. It is interesting to note that the continuous articles derailing white people from publications such as “the Root” are not considered hate speech, posting to Facebook “I hate white people” is not considered hate speech, BUT complaining about the immigration crisis DOES constitute hate speech.

Via Facebook:

• We took down 837 million pieces of spam in Q1 2018 — nearly 100% of which we found and flagged before anyone reported it; and
• The key to fighting spam is taking down the fake accounts that spread it. In Q1, we disabled about 583 million fake accounts — most of which were disabled within minutes of registration. This is in addition to the millions of fake account attempts we prevent daily from ever registering with Facebook. Overall, we estimate that around 3 to 4% of the active Facebook accounts on the site during this time period were still fake.

In terms of other types of violating content:

• We took down 21 million pieces of adult nudity and sexual activity in Q1 2018 — 96% of which was found and flagged by our technology before it was reported. Overall, we estimate that out of every 10,000 pieces of content viewed on Facebook, 7 to 9 views were of content that violated our adult nudity and pornography standards.
• For graphic violence, we took down or applied warning labels to about 3.5 million pieces of violent content in Q1 2018 — 86% of which was identified by our technology before it was reported to Facebook.
• For hate speech, our technology still doesn’t work that well and so it needs to be checked by our review teams. We removed 2.5 million pieces of hate speech in Q1 2018 — 38% of which was flagged by our technology.