Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to add 3,000 more content reviewers and invest in tools to help remove objectionable content more quickly, after a man broadcasted footage of himself killing his 11-month-old daughter.



Over the last few months, footage of shootings, murders, rapes and assaults has been streamed on Facebook. The live broadcasts have then been viewable as recorded videos by the social network’s users, often for days before being taken down.

But instead of scrutinising content before it is uploaded, Facebook relies on reporting tools used by the social network’s 1.86 billion users and a team of people at Facebook to review reported posts and content and retroactively remove them from the site.

Zuckerberg said: “Over the next year, we’ll be adding 3,000 people to our community operations team around the world – on top of the 4,500 we have today – to review the millions of reports we get every week, and improve the process for doing it quickly.

“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.”

Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said: “Keeping people safe is our top priority. We won’t stop until we get it right.”

Facebook has been criticised for its lack of expediency over the removing of objectionable content. Two videos of a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter in April were available for 24 hours before being removed, and were viewed over 370,000 times.

In March, a 15-year-old girl from Chicago was sexually assaulted by five or six men or boys, which was broadcast live to Facebook with at least 40 people watching. Earlier in April, the Cleveland murder of Robert Godwin, a 74-year-old former foundry worker, was posted to Facebook and was available to view for three hours before being taken down.

The Commons home affairs committee condemned Facebook and other technology companies for allowing such objectionable content and hate speech to exist on their platforms. After an inquiry following the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right gunman, MPs concluded: “Social media companies currently face almost no penalties for failing to remove illegal content

“We recommend that the government consult on a system of escalating sanctions, to include meaningful fines for social media companies which fail to remove illegal content within a strict timeframe.”

Zuckerberg said tackling these issues was “important” and that the videos showing people hurting themselves and others posted to Facebook have been “heartbreaking”. He said: “In addition to investing in more people, we’re also building better tools to keep our community safe. We’re going to make it simpler to report problems to us, faster for our reviewers to determine which posts violate our standards and easier for them to contact law enforcement if someone needs help. As these become available they should help make our community safer.”

Whether these tools and the extra manpower will be enough to curb the rise of objectionable and extremist content on Facebook remains to be seen. Most Facebook users can simply press a button and immediately begin live broadcasting of whatever is in front of their smartphone’s camera.

For now, technology companies including Facebook have been unable to discern objectionable content in real-time, leaving retroactive alerting and removal their primary tool.