Facebook has just released its Community Standards Enforcement Report for October through December 2020. The Community Standards and Enforcement Report tracks the progress and commitment to making Facebook and Instagram safe and inclusive. This quarterly report shares metrics on how we are doing at preventing and taking action on content that goes against our Community Standards while protecting our community’s safety, privacy, dignity and authenticity.
The latest report shows some positive strides towards improvements in prevalence, providing greater transparency and accountability around content moderation operations across different Facebook products. It includes metrics across 12 policies on Facebook and 10 policies on Instagram.
The report noted that during the 4th quarter (Q4) 2020, Facebook took action on 6.3 million pieces of bullying and harassment content, up from 3.5 million in Q3 due in part to updates in the platform’s technology to detect comments. It also addressed 6.4 million pieces of organized hate content, up from 4 million in Q3; 26.9 million pieces of hate speech content, up from 22.1 million in Q3 due in part to updates in Facebook’s technology in Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese.
Other actions taken on Facebook include 2.5 million pieces of suicide and self-injury content, up from 1.3 million in Q3, due to increased reviewer capacity.
However, on Instagram during the period in review, the company took action on 5 million pieces of bullying and harassment content, up from 2.6 million in Q3 due in part to updates in technology to detect comments. Instagram also saw 308,000 pieces of organized hate content, up from 224,000 in Q3, which was addressed; 6.6 million pieces of hate speech content, up from 6.5 million in Q3 and 3.4 million pieces of suicide and self-injury content, up from 1.3 million in Q3 due to increased reviewer capacity. All these were attended to by Instagram.
Speaking on the report, Director of Public Policy, Africa, Kojo Boakye said: “Our goal is to get better and more efficient at enforcing our Community Standards. We do this by increasing our use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), by prioritizing the content that could cause the most immediate, widespread, and real-world harm, and by coordinating and collaborating with outside experts.”
Facebook plans to share additional metrics on Instagram and add new policy categories on Facebook. The social media organisation notes that efforts are also being made to externally audit the metrics of these reports while making the data more interactive so people can understand it better. “We will continue to improve our technology and enforcement efforts to keep harmful content off of our apps,” the company assured.
