Facebook has taken the initiative to hire around 3,000 dedicated employees, following recent violent incidents on its social-networking platform to speed up the removal of posts featuring murder, suicide or any other violent act, according to Reuters.
Following the two video posts on the social media platform in April that showed killings in Thailand and the US, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took this drastic step and announced the same on Wednesday.
This move by Facebook, indeed, acknowledges the fact that the tech giants need more than just the automated bots to identify and tackle these problems.
Zuckerberg in Facebook post has mentioned that the new employees will join the already existing 4,500 people who presently review the videos posted on the platform. The 3,000 new workers will not only review the videos but will also be responsible for supervising all Facebook contents, said the company. Facebook has 17,000 employees overall, excluding contractors.
Although, some violent posts on Facebook are inevitable, considering its size, but the company has mainly been criticised for being slow in responding to those materials. This phenomenon has increased with the introduction of Facebook Live feature last year, which allows billions of Facebook users to broadcast live videos, which has been marred by some violent incidents.
Last week, a father in Thailand broadcasted himself killing his daughter on Facebook Live, police said. After more than a day, and 370,000 views, Facebook removed the video. Another video of a man shooting and killing another in Cleveland last month also shocked viewers.
"We're working to make these videos easier to report so we can take the right action sooner - whether that's responding quickly when someone needs help or taking a post down," said the founder of Facebook.
While UK lawmakers have recently accused social media platforms including Faceook of doing a "shameful" job removing child abuse and other potentially illegal material, German lawmakers have threatened the companies to fine them, if they fail to remove minimum 70% of the offending or violent posts within 24 hours. '
