Following a series of violent videos being uploaded or streamed via Facebook, the social network announced Wednesday it will expand its community operations team in an effort to respond to and remove such media faster.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement via Facebook on Wednesday (May 3) that the company plans to hire an additional 3000 new workers in the vast effort to reduce the amount of violence streamed directly from the site.
“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen people hurting themselves and others on Facebook — either live or in a video posted later. It’s heartbreaking, and I’ve been reflecting on how we can do better for our community,” Zuckerberg wrote.”If we’re going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly. 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.”
The new hires will try to address the problem of increased violence either being streamed over Facebook Live or uploaded after being recorded. In the past month alone, subscribers to the network have witnessed a man in Thailand live streamed the murder of his infant daughter, an Alabama man live streamed his suicide, an Ohio man uploaded a video of a murder he had committed, and teenagers in Tennessee recording a shooting.
Facebook, which has pushed its Facebook Live service hard over the past year, has faced criticism for not doing more to notice and remove such content faster. Zuckerberg revealed in his post that the community operations team already comprised 4,500 people, receive and review millions of reports about potentially offensive content a week.
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