Facebook says the elimination of hate speech is improving

NEW YORK – Facebook said it was progressing in the detection of hate speech, graphic violence and other violations of its rules, even before users see them and report them.

Facebook said that during the period from April to September, it had doubled the number of hate speech detected in a proactive manner compared to the previous six months.

The findings were exposed Thursday in Facebook's second report on the application of community standards. The reports come as Facebook faces challenge after challenge, misinformation about Facebook's role in electoral interference, hate speech and incitement to violence in the United States, Myanmar, India and elsewhere.

The company also said it has deactivated more than 1.5 billion fake accounts in the last half of the year, up from 1.3 billion in the previous six months. Facebook said most of the fake accounts discovered were motivated by financial considerations and not by misinformation. The company has nearly 2.3 billion users.

Facebook's report comes a day after the New York Times published a comprehensive report on how Facebook is managing the post-crisis crisis of the last two years. The Times described Facebook's strategy as "delaying, refusing and deflecting".

Facebook said Thursday spending time with a public relations firm in Washington, Definers, that the Times has hired to discredit its opponents. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a phone conversation with reporters that he had learned the existence of the company's relationship with Definers only when reading the Times report.

As for the community guidelines, Facebook has also released indicators on issues such as nudity and child sexual exploitation, terrorist propaganda, bullying and spamming. While revealing the number of detected offenses, the company said that she could not always reliably measure the prevalence of this information on Facebook. For example, if Facebook has taken action on 2 million cases of intimidation between July and September, that does not mean that there has been only 2 million cases of intimidation during this period.

In addition, Facebook plans to establish an independent body by next year to appeal the deletion or deletion of publications likely to violate its rules. Calls are currently processed internally.

Facebook employs thousands of people to review publications, photos, comments and videos in case of violation. Some things are also detected without humans, using artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg said that creating an independent appeals body would prevent the concentration of "too many decisions" within Facebook.

Facebook has faced accusations of bias against the Conservatives – which it denies – and criticism that it does not go far enough in removing hateful content.