Facebook has revealed the disturbingly large number of terrorist content it has had to remove from its platform over 2021.
Facebook has had to remove more than seven million pieces of terrorist content from its platform over the course of 2021.
Speaking to a Parliamentary inquiry into violent online material on Wednesday, Facebook said its latest Community Standards report registered 7.1 million pieces of terrorist content over a period of just three months between April and June of this year.
“We removed almost 10 million pieces of content and our proactive detection rate is now at 99.7 per cent as part of our long standing work to combat terrorist and extremist content,” said Facebook’s Vice-President of Public Policy Simon Milner.
On top of the 7.1million pieces of terrorist content removed from April-June this year, Facebook revealed it had also taken down 6.2 million posts about organised hate content and 31.5 million pieces of hate speech.
The world’s biggest social media platform has come under fire in recent years after a white supremacist live streamed his horrific attack on two Christchurch mosques on Facebook for more than 36 minutes in 2019.
The video showed the gunman shooting down some of the 51 people who were killed in the horrific attack.
But Facebook defended its handling of the live-streamed atrocity, claiming the video had been removed in an “accelerated” timeframe.
“The video was removed 36 minutes after it started. So actually that is accelerated review.
“Given the sheer amount of content that is posted to and was posted to Facebook at the time that is an accelerated timescale,” Mr Milner told the Parliamentary committee.
Facebook said it had performed a hard crackdown on terrorist and extreme violent material since the incident in 2019.
White nationalist and white supremacist content has since been banned on the platform, along with any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.
Since the introduction of these new restrictions, Facebook said it has banned more than 250 white supremacist organisations globally and removed nearly 900 militarised social movements from it’s platform.
“Some of the individuals and organisations designated in Australia include Blair Cottrell, Neil Erickson, Tom Sewell, the Lads Society, the United Patriots Front, True Blue Crew and the Antipodean Resistance,” the social media giant said.
The Australian parliament is currently conducting an investigation into the Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act 2019 to determine whether social media platforms are removing terrorist and other violent content in a timely manner.
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