Social media giant Facebook has for the first time disclosed prevalence of hate speech on its platform, saying that out of every 10,000 content views globally in the third quarter, 10-11 were hate speech.
Facebook, which has 1.82 billion daily users globally, has drawn flak in the past for its handling of hate speech on the platform in India that is among its biggest markets.
In its Community Standards Enforcement Report for September 2020 quarter, Facebook said it is including the prevalence of hate speech on its platform globally "for the first time". "In Q3 2020, hate speech prevalence was 0.10 per cent – 0.11 per cent or 10 to 11 views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of content," it added.
Facebook said due to its investments in artificial intelligence, the company has been able to remove more hate speech and find more of it proactively before users report it. "Our enforcement metrics this quarter, including how much hate speech content we found proactively and how much content we took action on, indicate that we're making progress in catching harmful content," it added.
Prevalence, on the other hand, estimates the percentage of times people see violating content on its platform, Facebook explained.
During the third quarter, Facebook took action on 22.1 million pieces of hate speech content, about 95 per cent of which was proactively identified. On Instagram, the company took action on 6.5 million pieces of hate speech content (up from 3.2 million in June quarter), about 95 per cent of which was proactively identified (up from about 85 per cent in the previous quarter), it added.
The latest Community Standards Enforcement Report provides metrics on how Facebook enforced its policies from July to September, and includes metrics across 12 policies on Facebook and 10 policies on Instagram.
Facebook Vice-President (Integrity) Guy Rosen said the company is also updating its Community Standards website to include additional policies that require more context and can't always be applied at scale.
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