Facebook has released the latest data on its initiatives to remove harmful content from its platforms, including child nudity and sexual abuse.
According to Facebook, it has removed 11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual abuse between July and September 2019. The social media and social networking service company has also released figures for Instagram, including data on posts related to suicide and self-harm.
These initiatives were launched following criticism over the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, who killed herself in 2017 and according to her father, he found large amounts of graphic material about self-harm and suicide on her Instagram account.
Facebook vice-president Guy Rosen wrote in a blog: "We remove content that depicts or encourages suicide or self-injury, including certain graphic imagery and real-time depictions that experts tell us might lead others to engage in similar behavior."
"We place a sensitivity screen over content that doesn't violate our policies but that may be upsetting to some, including things like healed cuts or other non-graphic self-injury imagery in a context of recovery," Rosen added.
According to Facebook's fourth Community Standards Enforcement Report, 11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation were removed from Facebook while 754,000 where taken down from Instagram. Meanwhile, 2.5 million pieces of content related to suicide and self-harm were removed from Facebook and 845,000 from Instagram.
Facebook also took down 4.4 million pieces of drug-sales content while Instagram removed 1.5 million of such content. Moreover, 2.3 million pieces of firearm-sales content were removed from Facebook and 58,600 from Instagram.
Facebook also claimed that it had removed over 99% of the content associated with al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and their affiliates while Instagram deleted 133,300 pieces of terrorist-propaganda content.
Despite these achievements, the company's future efforts to clamp down on harmful content might be hindered by its self-styled "pivot to privacy", announced by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, in part in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
