However, their own moderators tend to remove content ‘upon report only’.  This means that distressing content will be seen by many people before it is flagged and removed.

Facebook state that “Generally, imagery of animal abuse can be shared on Facebook” and “some extremely disturbing imagery may be marked as ‘disturbing’ as a warning to other users”.

Facebook categorise ‘disturbing’ as ‘photos of animal mutilations’ or ‘videos only of the act of abusing an animal or repeatedly kicking or beating an animal or an act of torture resulting in serious injury to an animal’.

Facebook state they will “ignore, without viewer protections, photos of acts of abuse, human kicking or beating an animal, photos of bruised or battered animals, sick or starved animals.”.  As well as using human moderators for supervising possibly alarming content, Facebook also uses A.I. algorithms to review images before they are posted.

Recently, the UK government’s Home Affairs Select Committee strongly criticised social media companies for not tackling the spread of hate speech and other illegal or distressing content.

This comes after major brands including Verizon pulled their adverts after they found they were appearing next to videos promoting extremist views and hate speech.

After some of Google’s high-profile advertisers left, Google publicly apologised for their lack of content moderation and pledged to give brands greater control over their advertising in an attempt to win them back.

“This marks a turning point for YouTube. For the first time, it’s dealing not only with reputation damage but revenue damage,” said Alex Krasodomski-Jones of Demos.

Facebook’s head of Global Policy states that ““We’re going to make it simpler to report problems to us, faster for our reviewers to determine which posts violate our standards and easier for them to contact law enforcement if someone needs help.”

But the fact remains that moderation of content is lacking and you can still find articles on how to make a home-made improvised explosive device like the one used in Manchester.

Perhaps pressure from advertisers is the key to changing social media sites…

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

• Our Facebook news
• Our Twitter news
• Our Pinterest news
• Our LinkedIn news

Data source:

Facebook graphic content policy sections 15.5 and 15.9.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, May 2017, London, ‘Facebook Moderation’

The post Facebook Moderation appeared first on YouCom.

Imagine the scene. Highly sensitive files, the sort of data that Hollywood tells us attracts men in grey suits ready to kill. Where do you offload it? A new viral craze has the answer. A media artist, Aram Bartholl, created ‘data dead-drops’. USB sticks embedded in walls all around the city, all around the world. Peer-to-peer file sharing in the physical world in true Banksy style.

YouCom has found the idea is spreading, growing to 1,500 dead-drop locations worldwide. It allows for anonymous, offline, file-sharing as a new kind of social network. If you have some homework or coursework for a friend, leave it in the wall by the side of Starbucks. Possibilities are endless and a new form of media sharing is born.

USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and even curbs! Accessible to anybody in public space. Aram Bartholl invites everyone to take part and drop or find files on a dead drop. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. If you want to install a dead drop in your city or neighbourhood follow the ‘how to’ instructions and submit the location and pictures.

To find out more, watch this upbeat video https://vimeo.com/16620712 or follow these instructions https://deaddrops.com/dead-drops/participate/

And don’t forget to Tweet YouCom Media about what you uploaded and where.

To reference data from this article, please use: ‘YouCom Media News, Mar 2015, London, ‘Peer-to-peer file sharing goes viral.’

The post Data Dead-Drops appeared first on YouCom.