Facebook Says It Removed 1.9 M Pieces of Content Related to Terrorism

Facebook recently claimed that it has removed or added a warning label on 1.9 million pieces of content related to terrorism. The content was linked to ISIS or al-Qaeda which was removed in the first quarter of the year 2018.

99 percent of that content has been removed and it was found by Facebook’s technology and employees by themselves, not reported by any user or informed by any third source. Facebook was under pressure because the European Union was forcing Facebook and its tech industry competitors to remove extremist content as soon as possible otherwise face legislation.

Facebook Removes 1.9 M Pieces of Content Related to Terrorism

To remove such type of content Facebook used automated software like image matching to detect some extremist material. Of the 1.9 million pieces of extremist content, the majority of extremist content was completely removed, however a small portion got a warning label that was shared for informational or counter-extremist purposes.

Facebook said:

“Any non-governmental organization that engages in premeditated acts of violence against persons or property to intimidate a civilian population, government, or international organization in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological aim.

The company further said:

“We’re under no illusion that the job is done or that the progress we have made is enough,” the company wrote. “Terrorist groups are always trying to circumvent our systems, so we must constantly improve. Researchers and our own teams of reviewers regularly find material that our technology misses. But we learn from every misstep, experiment with new detection methods and work to expand what terrorist groups we target.”

Facebook is still under attack for the spread of misinformation, propaganda and violence on its platform, hope soon the company will overcome this issue too.

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