Live Offensive Videos to be Taken Down by FB using Artificial Intelligence

Live video streams which facebook finds offensive in nature will now be taken down by the use of Artificial Intelligence. Within next few months, it will be able to automatically figure out which live video stream has got content which is derogatory in some way or the other. And that particular streaming will be blocked then and there. The use of  Machine Learning and Data Mining has been taken to a further advanced level in the Artificial Intelligence field.

The said move has also been taken in the wake of those recent incidents that questioned the intent and character of the social media site. One of these incidents include removal of a Vietnam War photo from several accounts on Facebook in the context of nudity, as the social media leader said that the picture is against their policy of curbing on nudity. Remind you that in the controversial picture, a girl child has been shown running from a napalm attack in a war situation. The second one is related to Fake News been found trending on FB news feed of late. Major news channels covered this story around the globe questioning FB’s authenticity.

Defragmenting the said Incidents

Nude Girl Child Screaming and Running from a Napalm Attack

The controversial  picture got reinstated after Norwegian PM Erna Solberg accused FB of editing history as the said picture got removed from the PM’s account too. In response to this, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a letter to the PM apologizing for the mistake done on their part and stated these words :

“These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right. Even with clear standards, screening millions of posts on a case-by-case basis every week is challenging”

The COO of the social media giant accepted the mistake in a very humble manner on their part and also acknowledged the fact that people gave them the hint to make improvement on the error made by agitating against them.

The war photograph involved was a 1972 picture by Nick Ut of the Associated Press who had also won a Pulitzer Prize.

Fake Stories Trending on the Facebook News Feed

The social site has also been accused of trending fake stories as “news”, which were actually found as works of fiction. The Washington Post, conducted an audit in between August 31 and September 22 across four FB accounts and found that the trending news stories in this period across these accounts were absolutely fake and been somewhat manipulated.

Moreover, on August 31, a Clemson University Administrator had been reported for kicking a man off campus while he was praying by FB in their news feed was totally doubtful and been claimed as false news.

In the next week only, on September 8, Facebook promoted an update regarding iPhone’s new magical features in their newsfeed, which was sourced from the site namingly “fakingnews.firstpost.com” which was also found to be inaccurate and untrue. Facebook, thus invoked a lot of doubts in people’s mind and the controversy got fuelled further.

Company’s Current Norm to Flag Offensive Content

Facebook till now had relied on the users to report the offensive content. At present, what happens is when a user reports any post as offensive, then that particular post goes for a review to the concerned department of facebook to be declared as offensive or non-offensive. Accordingly, the decision gets taken by this team of employees of Facebook. The issues that are found a little dicy or demand for the policy changes to be made are often taken to the top executives of the organization and they take the final decision. That’s the current norm to flag any content or post.

Facebook already had been using Artificial Intelligence and Predictive Analysis to detect offensive content in its user-posts for quite a while but in case of live video streaming, the use of AI is still in the research stage. In November, the CEO of the company Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement that FB would soon be turning towards the use of AI to flag fake news as the incidents of it are rising with every passing day.

The statement came in response to the fake news been circulated in FB news feed during the cooling period of the recent US Presidential Elections. These fake news included reports which alleged that Pope Francis is endorsing Trump and that a federal agent who had been investigating Hillary Clinton was found dead.

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Facebook is surely hurt on its obligations part as it has not been able to adhere to in the recent past. Now, they are looking very hopeful of the use of Predictive Analysis and Machine Learning technology to curb on the abusive content being posted by users in their live video feeds. Only the future will tell about whether they will be able to take control of the spammed content and fake news been posted on their site. We just need to wait and watch.. !