Facebook says it's better at detecting rule violations

Facebook said it's making progress on detecting hate speech, graphic violence and other violations of its rules, even before users see and report them.

Facebook said that during the April-to-September period, it doubled the amount of hate speech it detected proactively, compared with the previous six months.

The findings were spelled out Thursday in Facebook's second semiannual report on enforcing community standards. The reports come as Facebook grapples with challenge after challenge, ranging from fake news to Facebook's role in elections interference, hate speech and incitement to violence in the US, Myanmar, India and elsewhere.

The company also said it disabled more than 1.5 billion fake accounts in the latest six-month period, compared with 1.3 billion during the previous six months.

Facebook said most of the fake accounts it found were financially motivated, rather than aimed at misinformation.

The company has nearly 2.3 billion users.

Facebook's report comes a day after The New York Times published an extensive report on how Facebook deals with crisis after crisis over the past two years.

The Times described Facebook's strategy as "delay, deny and deflect."
"Their primary mission isn't to be good for society. It's to make money. There are business concerns."