Facebook Inc. is hiring thousands of people around the world to combat violent posts. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will hire 3,000 people for its community operations team to monitor posts that are flagged by the community as being inappropriate.
According to Marketwatch report the team will nearly double from 4,500 today. In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg said Facebook was responding to a number of incidents of people hurting themselves — and others — live on Facebook in videos. This follows several chilling incidents on Facebook in recent months and the spread of fake news on the website.
Earlier this month, a man in Cleveland shot a stranger and streamed it live on Facebook and then used the platform to brag about other murders he had committed, while taunting law enforcement to catch him. The video of the murder was left online for two hours until Facebook pulled it down, prompting outcry and pledges from Facebook to do more to address the issue.
“We need to respond quickly,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Wednesday.
In addition to murders and suicides, Facebook will also use the additional staff to flag and remove other things the company doesn’t allow on the platform, such as hate speech and child exploitation. Facebook is working on tools to make it easier to report posts so that the team can be alerted to major problems as quickly as possible.
The company plans to work with law enforcement as well. Last week, Zuckerberg said Facebook was alerted that someone in one of its live videos was contemplating committing suicide. “We immediately reached out to law enforcement, and they were able to prevent him from hurting himself,” Zuckerberg said. “In other cases, we weren’t so fortunate.”
Shares of Facebook fell 0.5% to $152 in morning trade. They’ve gained 16% in the past three months and nearly 30% in the past year, outperforming the S&P 500 up 4% and 16%, respectively.
