Extremism on Facebook: COO Sheryl Sandberg Says Company Increasing Real-Time Monitoring

Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg touted the company’s proactive efforts to provide “counterterrorism narratives” against extremist ideologies on its platform, adding that Facebook frequently works with governments to identify and remove potential terrorism-related content.

Sandberg spoke with Bloomberg Television Monday on the eve of her arrival at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in France as she will make the case that “the small screen is big.” Facebook’s COO said she will focus on the company’s video ad targeting and that users are overwhelmingly choosing their phones as the primary tool for news and communication. Sandberg also responded to recent criticism that Facebook is being used as a platform to spread radical ideologies. But she touted the company’s plan to increase its monitoring and removal of extremist content.

Read: Security Breach Exposes Personal Profiles Of Facebook Terrorism Moderators

“We’re in constant conversations with governments on issues of security…governments can not only just make sure terrorism is prevented, but can actually do counterterrorism work that gets positive messages out there.”

"Success from a company point of view is to make sure there is no inappropriate content of any kind -- hate, violence, terrorism, any of this -- on our platform.” She said the company plans to hire 3,000 more human terrorism experts to join the current 4,500 humans working around the world with AI “monitoring videos in real time to find any content that may be inappropriate and get it off faster.”

Facebook Creating 'Counter Narratives' Alongside Law Enforcement Agencies

Sandberg described the “Online Civil Courage Initiatives” (OCCI’s) being used in places such as Berlin, in which tech companies are working with law enforcement agencies to provide “counter narratives” to extremist content and to help identify individuals who may be involved in potential terrorist activity.

She said Facebook commonly works alongside other social media and tech companies to identify and remove content from extremist users across all platforms.

“When anyone identifies someone they think is going to put inappropriate content on a platform we can all remove them quickly,” she said. "We’re hoping to stop the spread of someone going from one platform to another.”

She mentioned a Unilever ad in India that featured a transgender rock band as a successful example of the company’s ability to “counter negative stereotypes” regarding gender equality.

Moving forward, Sandberg stressed Facebook’s “broad responsibility” to create new jobs as technology outsources humans and humbly touted that the social network giant works with 70 million small businesses. Of those, she said 5 million of the companies using Facebook each month are advertisers and she added that Instagram has 8 million business profiles and 1 million are advertisers.

"Technology is certainly replacing jobs,'' she told Bloomberg Television on Monday. “And technology can also be used to grow jobs. It's our responsibility to help small businesses and large businesses all around the world use technology to grow their businesses so that they can grow jobs.”