Figure of the Week: 20 000
Facebook has pledged to have 20,000 employees monitoring harmful content on its platform by the end of 2018.
The tech giant currently employs about 10,000 people for this task.
Facebook is under growing pressure to crack down on trolls, bots, disinformation, and hate speech.
Although the company has taken a number of measures, including changing its algorithm, public concern is growing over the role of Facebook and Twitter in helping malicious users spread disinformation.
U.S. authorities recently charged 13 Russian citizens and three Russian companies with conspiring to “sow discord in the U.S. political system,” in particular the 2016 presidential election.
One of the three charged companies is the notorious Internet Research Agency, a troll factory based in St. Petersburg believed to have conducted large-scale disinformation campaigns in the United States and Europe.
Further reading:
Disinformation goes hand in hand with election advertising