In addition to implementing new safeguards to crack down on revenge porn and election-sabotaging fake news campaigns, Facebook announced today that it would be hiring 3,000 additional employees to the company’s community operations team to assist in reviewing reports about inappropriate content. Specifically, this initiative aims to prevent individuals from hurting themselves or others, and then broadcasting live to the social media network.
Not surprisingly, this announcement comes in the wake of the now deceased Steve Stephens documenting himself murdering an elderly man in Cleveland, Ohio on Facebook last month. Shortly after the killing, the company admitted that it needed better processes in place to assure the swift removal of this type of content.
Mark Zuckerberg announced the news Wednesday in a lengthy Facebook post:
The rest of his post reads as follows:
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.
These reviewers will also help us get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation. And we’ll keep working with local community groups and law enforcement who are in the best position to help someone if they need it — either because they’re about to harm themselves, or because they’re in danger from someone else.
In addition to investing in more people, we’re also building better tools to keep our community safe. 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. As these become available they should help make our community safer.
This is important. Just last week, we got a report that someone on Live was considering suicide. We immediately reached out to law enforcement, and they were able to prevent him from hurting himself. In other cases, we weren’t so fortunate.
No one should be in this situation in the first place, but if they are, then we should build a safe community that gets them the help they need.
The announcement comes in stark contrast to a leaked document this week which states that Facebook is also allegedly experimenting with ways to let marketers target teens when they’re basically at their lowest. With any luck, good sense will prevail on all fronts.