Facebook reach 2bn monthly users and are deleting 66,000 ’hate’ posts weekly
Facebook said it has deleted about 66,000 posts a week in the last two months as the social media giant cracks down on what it deems to be hate speech.
The company said in a blog post that deleting posts can "feel like censorship" but that it is working on explaining its process better and improving its enforcement of hate speech.
Facebook defines hate speech as attacks on people based on their race, sexual orientation and other "protected characteristics".
The California-based company said it mostly relies on its two billion users to report any hateful posts they see.
Workers then review the posts and decide whether to delete them.
Facebook said it plans to hire an additional 3,000 people in the next year to review posts.
That is on top of the 4,500 people it currently has reviewing posts.
The company also announced today that it now has more than two billion users.
Two Billion People Coming Together on Facebook https://t.co/NMwI1NTplD
— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) June 27, 2017
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post that he is proud of the role his company is playing in connecting people around the world.
More than 175 million people declare they "love" something on the site daily and an average of more than 800 million people hit Facebook’s like button, the company said.
Facebook users are likely to see a personalised video celebrating the milestone in the next few days.
The company, based in Menlo Park, California, is putting more emphasis on creating virtual communities within the site while it is also working to reduce violent, hateful and misleading content on the service.
