Zuckerberg promises 3,000 more reviewers after Cleveland Facebook shooting video

Mark Zuckerberg has spoken out on the recent spate of violence and self-harm shared on Facebook, promising to add more human reviewers to flag, remove, and report such videos. The social network has made headlines over the past weeks for a number of violent incidents that had been posted by Facebook users, either as videos or as Facebook Live streams in real-time. The controversy had prompted concerns about what Facebook would – or indeed could – do to prevent such sharing.

In April, for instance, a man was shot in Cleveland, with the killer filming the attack and uploading it to Facebook. Other videos have contained scenes of self-harm and other injury. Facebook's terms of service precluded content being shared that includes violence, but the process of actually removing it from the site has not always worked as planned.

Now, Zuckerberg says, he's drafting in extra people to help with the task. Facebook already has 4,500 in its community operations team, spread around the world to assess and respond to reports from users. That's getting 3,000 more people over the coming year, the Facebook CEO promises, "to review the millions of reports we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly."

Meanwhile there'll be changes to how videos can be flagged in the first place, with the goal of making such content "easier to report". It's not just about deleting content which some might find offensive, either. Zuckerberg says that the improvements should also make it more efficient when Facebook contacts the authorities on a user's behalf should they be deemed at-risk.

"These reviewers will also help us get better at removing things we don't allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation," the CEO continues. "And we'll keep working with local community groups and law enforcement who are in the best position to help someone if they need it – either because they're about to harm themselves, or because they're in danger from someone else."

With the increasing prevalence of social networking in peoples' lives, its become more commonplace for them to turn to their Facebook pages – or, indeed, their Twitter, tumblr, or other accounts – when they're struggling. "Just last week, we got a report that someone on Live was considering suicide," Zuckerberg writes. "We immediately reached out to law enforcement, and they were able to prevent him from hurting himself. In other cases, we weren't so fortunate."

It's a topic many had expected Facebook to devote more time to at its recent developer event, F8 2017. Held in April in California, the multi-day conference was focused for the most part on how Facebook plans to integrate 360-degree photos and video, virtual reality and augmented reality, and more live-streaming into both its core platforms and more high-tech products such as Oculus and, down the line, AR glasses. While Zuckerberg did mention the Cleveland shooting, and concede that "we have a lot of work and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening," there was no further mention of Facebook's role in over-sharing of this sort during the keynote.

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