Facebook executives dodged saying how many more employees they're willing to hire to review nefarious content on its platform.
Why it matters: It's clear that human content reviewers are needed to address some of the biggest safety and security concerns on the platform, like suicide warnings and egregious content. Facebook has committed to doubling the number of staff monitoring content but it's not clear if that is a viable long-term strategy given Facebook's more than 2 billion users.
“I think this is actually where there’s incredible opportunity through technology,” Facebook safety chief Antigone Davis said. “I think the opportunity for technology to fill some of that — you know how many reviewers — is, I would say boundless."
The details: In a conversation with Axios' Kim Hart, Davis and VP of Product Guy Rosen touted that "every piece of content" that triggers the company's suicide prevention efforts is reviewed by humans. But in other instances, they conceded that automating the review is really the only way to scale their safety efforts.
Asked if technology alone can ever get ahead of some of the issues discussed at the event, Rosen said that it is "certainly not a silver bullet," but that they are "building the right set of tools," to conquer the avalanche of unforeseen safety issues "step by step."
The conversation occurred Thursday at a Facebook Security Summit in Washington. The event was designed to offer clarity into their efforts around tech addiction, privacy and safety.
