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Facebook witnesses rise in removal of hate speech posts

Social media giant Facebook has reported a sharp increase in the number of posts it removed for promoting violence and hate speech across its apps.

The company removed approximately 4.7 million posts connected to organised hate organisations on its flagship Facebook app in the first quarter of 2020, up from 1.6 million pieces of content in the previous quarter.

Additionally, it removed 9.6 million Facebook posts containing hate speech in the first quarter, compared with 5.7 million pieces of content in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Facebook released the data as part of its fifth Community Standards Enforcement Report, which it introduced in response to criticism of its lax approach to policing its platforms. The organisation has attributed the increase in removed posts to improvements made to its technology for automatically identifying text and images.

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