Reply To:
Name - Reply Comment
Last Updated : 2024-04-25 00:00:00
Facebook has significantly increased its investments to ramp up Sinhala and Tamil language expertise targeting to curb hate speech and other harmful contents originating from Sri Lanka on the social media platform.
“We have invested heavily on Sinhala and Tamil language expertises as we have promised. We significantly ramped up our language expertise in Sri Lanka through hiring more experts after the Digana riots,” a Facebook spokesperson told reporters in Colombo yesterday.
He noted that their public policy team members in Sri Lanka have worked closely with the global team in providing additional context to curb hate speech on the platform.
According to Facebook’s latest community standards enforcement report, the social media platform removed four million pieces of hate speech globally from the platform in the first quarter of the year.
It stated that improvements and expansion of its proactive detection allowed Facebook to increase the amount of content it detected from 3.3 million in 4Q 2018 to four million in 1Q 2019.
The spokesperson highlighted that 65.4 percent of hate speech content was removed by its proactive detection tools, compared to 51.5 percent in 3Q18, which is a significant improvement.
“We have invested in proactive detection tools; AI tools become stronger over last few years,” he said.
However, as hate speech is highly contextual, the official noted that Facebook has to rely more on the community to report such content.
Facebook is in the process of developing a global metric while expanding prevalence measurement to cover more languages and regions, to account for cultural context and nuances for individual languages.
A team of Facebook officials also hosted its second community standard forum in Sri Lanka on Tuesday with civil society leaders and experts.
Facebook has deployed a team of 30,000 to work on safety and security issues of its users globally, of which over 15,000 have been deployed to look into content-specific issues.
Under its community standards, the social media platform removes hate speech, which includes content that directly attacks people based on their race, religion, national origin, gender identity, caste, sex, ethnicity, serious disability and sexual orientation.
However, Facebook doesn’t regard the ideas that challenge institutions and practices as hate speech, ensuring the right for freedom of speech on the platform.
According to some reports, there were nearly six million Facebook users in Sri Lanka as of last year and there was also a significant number of fake profiles originating from Sri Lanka, which are mainly used to circulate harmful content.
During the first quarter of this year, Facebook has removed 2.2 billion fake accounts globally. (Nishel Fernando)
ANTON Thursday, 11 July 2019 10:38 AM
HATE SPEECH IS ALLOWED ONLY INSIDE THE PARLIAMENT. IT IS LEGAL.
good Thursday, 11 July 2019 11:06 AM
very good move. As the Election is around the corner, many SL politicians resort to such unethical practices.
Sam Thursday, 11 July 2019 11:12 AM
Sri Lanka, a land of hate speech like no other!
xlntgson Thursday, 11 July 2019 12:13 PM
Very difficult, because unbiased are rare to find
Add comment
Comments will be edited (grammar, spelling and slang) and authorized at the discretion of Daily Mirror online. The website also has the right not to publish selected comments.
Reply To:
Name - Reply Comment
US authorities are currently reviewing the manifest of every cargo aboard MV
On March 26, a couple arriving from Thailand was arrested with 88 live animal
According to villagers from Naula-Moragolla out of 105 families 80 can afford
Is the situation in Sri Lanka so grim that locals harbour hope that they coul