Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday penned a post on the social network in which he outlines the company's plan to beef up its community operations team over the coming year.
As you've no doubt witnessed in recent months, Facebook has a serious problem on its hands with regard to the content being depicted in both live and pre-recorded video.
In August 2015, a disgruntled reporter published video to Facebook showing him gunning down two former colleagues and a third person. Just last month, Steve Stephens uploaded graphic video of him shooting an elderly man in broad daylight that was followed a couple of weeks later by a video of a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter.
Although Facebook obviously shoulders no blame for the individual incidents, the fact that it offers an outlet for people to publish live and pre-recorded video of heinous acts is something that must be addressed. It's heartbreaking, Zuckerberg said, and has forced him to reflect on how they can do better for the community.
In a bid to improve its response time to such incidents, Zuckerberg said Facebook will be adding 3,000 people to its community operations team worldwide. They'll join the 4,500 people already employed to review the millions of reports they receive each week, he noted.
In addition to adding additional sets of eyes, Facebook is also working on new tools that'll make it easier for people to report problems, faster for reviewers to determine if posts violate their terms of service and easier for employees to get in touch with local support groups and law enforcement when necessary.