Facebook Business: What Content Facebook Deletes and What You Have to Delete Yourself

Content Moderation: Clean Websites Require a Lot of Work

Anyone who runs their own website or Facebook page knows how much work it is to keep it clean and professional. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions, especially when it comes to content moderation. While you have the choice on your own website whether to allow comments and posts from third parties in general, Facebook allows these ways of interaction by default. That make sense because it’s what social networks are all about. To ensure that surfing on Facebook remains safe, the company employs so-called content moderators who decide which posts may remain on the platform and which will be deleted because they violate the guidelines.

Deleting Posts: Facebook Relies on AI

However, before one of the approximately 15,000 moderators receives a post for review, it is checked by Facebook's AI (artificial intelligence). The effort would otherwise be impossible to cope with given the countless contributions that are posted on the platform every day. As soon as a user or an AI-based content filter classifies a post as problematic, the system flags it.

Flagged posts are then analysed in chronological order by another AI system and, in clear cases, deleted. The posts are only passed on to humans when there are doubts. In itself, it’s a good system that is constantly being further developed. For example, the social network announced that in future it would no longer edit posts according to the date they were received, but according to relevance. Facebook didn’t reveal which factors the new AI uses, but posts with particularly incendiary content or with a particularly large reach are given higher priority.

Become a Professional Content Moderator with 80 Hours of Training?

For the content moderators, this means that they only work on problem cases that the AI can’t handle. If you think that such a responsible job requires years of training, you are wrong. Because according to Facebook, 80 hours of training with internal training materials explaining how to apply Facebook's policies to specific posts is enough. However, if you take a closer look at the documents, as Christian Erxleben, the editor-in-chief of Basic Thinking did, you might be surprised ...

Delete Posts: Between Freedom of Expression and Discrimination

Disparaging terms for ethnic groups have no place on Facebook, according to the documents. But a caricature of a minaret in the shape of a penis is protected under freedom of expression. As long as the caption doesn’t make derogatory comments about Muslims or Islam. It’s hard to understand how the line is drawn here.

The Final Supervisory Authority: On your Business Page your Rules Apply

Christian Erxleben’s article ends with a terrifying insight: Facebook created a network that it can no longer control. The fact that Facebook doesn’t delete something doesn’t mean it is not discriminatory or offensive. If questionable posts land on your Facebook business page, you as the operator share responsibility. If a user’s post violates applicable law, you become liable for it and the associated damages, just like you would for your own website. Since you created the conditions for the existing infringement in the first place by providing the page, you are partly to blame in the eyes of the legislator. The solution to the problem is obvious: Your Facebook business page also needs content moderation.

Tips for the Content Moderation for your Own Facebook Business Site

In principle, the same rules apply on Facebook as on the rest of the Internet. This means that content that violates applicable law must be deleted from your own site straight away (immediately after it becomes known). Examples of typical posts:

• Copyright infringement (also in the form of memes or quotations )
• Hate speech, agitation and insults
• Discrimination
• Data protection violations (including customer inquiries in which users post their own email addresses or telephone numbers)
• Links to unsafe websites (malware, phishing, etc.)

Strong professional indemnity insurance also covers your social media accounts 

With so many regulations and decisions, it’s often difficult to keep track of things. That’s why insurance for your social media presence is included in Professional Indemnity Insurance through exali.com along with your other professional risks. If you are fined for your social media activity, the insurer’s claims specialists will investigate for you. If it’s legal, the claim is paid, excessive claims are adjusted and unfounded claims are rejected, all at the expense of the insurer.

And you can take out exali Professional Indemnity Insurance completely online in just 5 minutes. If you have any questions about the ideal insurance product for your profession, please contact the exali insurance experts. They look forward to your call and can be reached without going through a a call centre or waiting queue.