
Facebook revealed there was a 56 percent increase in the number of posts removed for violating the site’s “hate speech” rule. Facebook’s Community standards Enforcement Preliminary Report showed that between October and December 2017, it “took action” against 1.6 million pieces of content for violating the site’s Community Standards rule against hate speech.
Twitter announced on Tuesday it will institute a new policy to crackdown on how visible allegedly bad tweets are on the site. Users who are believed to be engaging in “troll-like” behavior will be corralled into a “[s]how more replies” section while users deemed to be contributing to “healthy” conversations will be unaffected.
A Twitter spokesperson defended Hamas’ ability to maintain a presence on the site, despite Twitter’s rule against supporting and perpetuating violence. According to the spokesperson, the group’s alleged commitment to peace and status as a democratically-elected organization exempts Hamas from the explicit rule banning terrorist organizations from the platform.
Several digital rights organizations have banded together to urge social media sites to be more transparent. The Electronic Freedom Frontier (EFF), the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and other groups produced detailed guidelines for companies like Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook is apparently testing out a new feature that appeared to allow posters to report content as hate speech.
On Tuesday afternoon, Facebook users saw an option to report every post in their feeds for “hate speech,” regardless of the context. Posts about food, cats, and even news links all had the option to report them for containing hate speech.