Facebook’s Latest Community Standard Enforcement Report Shows Progress In Preventing Harmful Content

Facebook has released its industry-leading Community Standards Enforcement Report (CSER) for the first quarter of 2021. The report shares metrics on the progress made by Facebook in preventing and taking action on content that goes against its Community Standards while protecting the community’s safety, privacy, and dignity. 

The new report includes data on how Facebook is performing in enforcing 12 of its policy areas on Facebook and 10 on Instagram for the January-March 2021 period. It shows some positive strides towards improvements in prevalence, providing greater transparency and accountability around content moderation operations across different Facebook products. 

We’ve appointed EY to audit this latest report, as part of its commitment to independent oversight and verification of its performance. 

We’ve also expanded our reporting efforts by adding more prevalence metrics for Instagram, which will now include prevalence for adult nudity and sexual activity, and violent and graphic content. Prevalence of hate speech on Facebook continues to decrease and this is an improvement that continues to stem from changes Facebook has made to reduce problematic content in News Feed.

“The report highlights how we are getting better and more efficient at enforcing our Community Standards through a multipronged approach that includes Artificial Intelligence (AI), human moderation, user reporting tools and collaboration with external experts.”, said Kojo Boakye, Director of Public Policy, Africa. 

“It’s pleasing that hate speech prevalence on Facebook continues to decrease for a third quarter in a row. Across the board, we’re seeing improvements in our numbers, and we will continue to share our progress each quarter.”, he added. 

Facebook is also launching a Transparency Centre to provide a single destination for information about its integrity efforts. This site will make it easier to view Community Standards Enforcement Report trends and find data around specific policy areas. 

We will continue improving technology and enforcement efforts to remove harmful content from our platforms and keep people safe while using the Facebook family of apps.