Facebook found 22.1 million pieces of hate speech in 3 months

Facebook has for the first time revealed statistics related to hate speech on its platform.

Facebook has for the first time revealed statistics related to hate speech on its platform.
 

In its transparency report released on Thursday, Facebook said over 22.1 million pieces of hate speech content, about 95% of which was proactively identified and action was taken upon them.

Revealing more statistics, the social media giant said that in third quarter of 2020, hate speech prevalence was 0.10% – 0.11% or 10 to 11 views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of content.

Facebook said that violent and graphic content had done up in the third quarter of the 2020. Around 19.2 million pieces of violent and graphic content were detected in this quarter as compared to 15 million in Q2.

Another 12.4 million pieces of child nudity and sexual exploitation content were detected. In comaparison, 9.5 million in were detected and acted upon in Q2.

In a statement, Facebook said: "Our proactive detection rates for violating content are up due to improvements in AI and expanding our detection technologies to more languages."

With with COVID surging, accurate information is more important than ever. And between March and October of 2020, the company removed more than 12 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram for containing misinformation that may lead to imminent physical harm such as content relating to fake preventative measures or exaggerated cures.