Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has expressed worry over the recent suicide and murder cases on the social media platform.
The internet entrepreneur, who stated this in a release on Wednesday, described the videos of such incidents posted on Facebook as ‘heart-breaking’.
He stressed the need to address the issues in the course of building a safe community, saying efforts are on to ensure such videos are reported easily.
“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen people hurting themselves and others on Facebook — either live or in video posted later. It’s heart-breaking, and I’ve been reflecting on how we can do better for our community.
“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,” he said.
Zuckerberg further revealed plans by the social media giant to increase its team by recruiting additional 3,000 people across the globe.
He noted that the new staff would review the activities of those who engage in hate speech and child exploitation, and promptly report harmful cases to local authorities.
“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.
“These reviewers will also help us get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation. 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,” 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.
“This is important. Just last week, we got a report that someone on Live was considering suicide. 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.
“No one should be in this situation in the first place, but if they are, then we should build a safe community that gets them the help they need,” the Facebook boss added.
