Facebook is getting better at detecting hate speech

The social network just released its first content moderation report.
In the first quarter of 2018...

• 583 million fake accounts were closed. Three to four percent of Facebook’s monthly users are fake.
• Facebook took enforcement action against 21 million posts containing nudity.
• The company found 2.5 million posts containing hate speech, a 56-percent increase over the last quarter of 2017.
• The number of terrorism-related posts removed increased by 73 percent over the previous quarter.

Why the numbers matter: It’s a picture of the sheer quantity of content Facebook’s moderators—both human and algorithmic—churn through. But remember, these numbers represent only what’s actually been identified.
The road ahead: Facebook’s software for policing content is getting better, but it’s nowhere near ready to take over sole responsibility: 62 percent of the hate speech posts on which action was taken were first reported by users.