SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, facing withering criticism from governments around the world, said Thursday that it had been more aggressive in recent months about scrubbing its platform of hate speech.

In a report the company releases biannually, Facebook also said its automated detection software that scrubs illicit content was improving: It now automatically detects and removes more than half of the hate speech on the platform.

Regulators have expressed renewed interest in cracking down on Facebook after a gunman in Christchurch, New Zealand, live-streamed his mass killings on his Facebook account. The video was viewed just 4,000 times before Facebook removed it, but it spread rapidly across the internet and was reposted millions of times.

The quick distribution of the video — and the apparent inability of Facebook and other tech companies to stop it from spreading — led to calls from regulators who said the company must do a better job of policing the content posted on its platform.