Technology

Facebook is still failing to enforce its own rules against election disinformation, conspiracy theories, hate speech, and other policies, another new analysis finds (FB)

Published Oct 16 2020 at 12:06 AM GMT

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Under pressure both internally and externally to crack down harder on toxic content, Facebook has rolled out a series of new policies in the last year on everything from hate speech to coronavirus misinformation to foreign election interference.
But a new analysis from The Wall Street Journal on Thursday revealed that Facebook is still failing to enforce those policies consistently, quickly, or sometimes even at all.
Users have the ability to report content on Facebook they believe violates its policies.
But of the 150 pieces of such content that The Journal reported this way " and that Facebook later confirmed violated its rules " the company's review process didn't take down the content in roughly 25% of cases.
In September, The Wall Street Journal also reported 276 pieces of content for apparently violating Facebook's rules against promoting or violence or spreading dangerous misinformation, but its content moderation system removed the posts in just 32 cases.