Facebook to hire additional 3,000 workers to review content
Move comes after a number of gruesome videos appeared on the social network
Facebook is bringing in 3,000 additional workers to quickly identify and remove sickening videos posted on the social network.
The move comes after a number of gruesome videos appeared on Facebook. Last week a man in Thailand hanged his 11-month old daughter on Facebook Live, then killed himself in an appalling murder-suicide. The horrific incident came less than two weeks after a video showing the killing of an elderly man in Cleveland was posted on the social network.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained the changes in a post Monday, noting that the social network needs a swift response when videos appear.
“Over the next year, we'll be adding 3,000 people to our community operations team around the world -- on top of the 4,500 we have today -- to review the millions of reports we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly,” he wrote.
The reviewers will also help Facebook get better at removing the likes of hate speech and child exploitation, according to Zuckerberg. “In addition to investing in more people, we're also building better tools to keep our community safe,” he added. “We’re going to make it simpler to report problems to us, faster for our reviewers to determine which posts violate our standards and easier for them to contact law enforcement if someone needs help.”
Social media expert and President of JRM Comms Jason Mollica welcomed Facebook's clampdown on sick content. "I think this is a great move," he told Fox News in a phone interview. "The best thing now will be for Facebook to ensure that these 3,000 people are trained properly and know what to look for."
After the Cleveland killing, Facebook launched a review of video content in an attempt to tackle horrific videos. Facebook uses artificial intelligence technology to identify content that needs to be removed, as well as a large network of employees that monitor reports from Facebook users.
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Facebook Live, in particular, poses a huge challenge for the social network as evidenced this year, in January, when a mentally disabled man in Chicago was bound, duct-taped and tortured, allegedly by four suspects who yelled anti-Trump and racial slurs while broadcasting the heinous ordeal on Facebook Live.
In March, the rape of a 15-year-old girl was livestreamed via the service.
The Live feature has also been used to livestream a number of suicides, prompting Facebook to integrate suicide prevention tools into the feature.
Facebook reports first-quarter earnings where it is expected to earn $1.12 a share on $7.83 billion, due to its advertising prowess.
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