Facebook hiring 3,000 extra moderators to review videos of crime and suicides

Facebook has announced it will hire another 3,000 people to review videos of crime and suicides following murders shown live on the social network.

The company already has 4,500 people working on such reviews and claims to receive millions of flagged “reports” each week.

The announcement came from chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post today.

He said the new “reviewers”, to be brought in over the next year, will help the social media platform “get better at removing things we don’t allow on Facebook like hate speech and child exploitation”.

Facebook has been criticised recently for not doing enough to prevent graphic videos – such as a murder in Cleveland and the killing of a baby in Thailand – from spreading on its service.

Videos and posts that glorify violence are against Facebook‘s terms of service. However, in most cases, users have to report them to the company for them to be reviewed and possibly removed.

“If we’re going to build a safe community, we need to respond quickly,” Zuckerberg said.

“We’re working to make these videos easier to report so we can take the right action sooner – whether that’s responding quickly when someone needs help or taking a post down.”

Press Gazette revealed yesterday that a video news bulletin has been banned from Facebook because it argued that drugs should be legalised.