FB, Instagram ramp up hate speech, bullying content removal

San Francisco, Feb 12 : Facebook has removed 26.9 million pieces of hate speech content in the fourth quarter of 2020 — up from 22.1 million in Q3 and the company gives credit to improvements in its automated systems that catch and purge such comments.
The social network also blocked 6.4 million pieces of organised hate content in the October-December period from its main platform, up from 4 million in Q3.
Instagram also saw significant jumps in hate speech, bullying and self-harm removals, according to the company’s ‘Community Standards Enforcement Report’.
Facebook took down 6.3 million pieces of bullying and harassment content from its platform in the fourth quarter of 2020 — up from 3.5 million in Q3.
“Last quarter, we shared the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook for the first time to show the percentage of times people see this type of content on our platform. This quarter, hate speech prevalence dropped, seven to eight views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of content,” Guy Rosen, VP Integrity at Facebook, said in a blog post late on Thursday.
Facebook said that its proactive rate for bullying and harassment went from 26 per cent in Q3 to 49 per cent in Q4 on its main platform, and 55 per cent to 80 per cent on Instagram.