Published 11:21 IST, August 29th 2020
Facebook found no link between Kenosha shooter and militia page: Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the social media firm didn’t find any connection between the Kenosha shooter and the page and event of a militia group.
- World News
- 2 min read
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the social media firm didn’t find any connection between the Kenosha shooter and the page and event of a militia group. However, Zuckerberg stressed that the page and event violated Facebook policies and should have been removed after receiving complaints about the group’s violent nature.
Zuckerberg took the responsibility for not removing the page and event of the group before the Kenosha shooting in which two people were killed at a protest site. Zuckerberg said that it was “largely an operational mistake” as contractors and reviewers didn’t pick up the initial complaints against Facebook page “Kenosha Guard” and an event listed for ‘Armed Citizens to Protect Our Lives and Property’.
The 36-year-old internet entrepreneur told his employees in video publicly posted on his Facebook page that a specialised team enforces policies against dangerous organisations trained to look for symbolism and innuendos. He said that the social media firm has designated the shooting as mass murder and removed the shooter's page from Facebook and accounts from Instagram.
“The contractors and reviewers who the initial complaints were funnelled to basically didn’t pick this up. And on second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that’s responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down,” he said.
Kenosha shooting
Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, is accused of a shooting incident in Kenosha which left two people dead and a third person seriously injured. The suspect was arrested in Illinois and charged with one count of reckless homicide, one for attempted intentional homicide and two counts of recklessly endangering safety.
Last month, Facebook had boasted that the company has been able to tackle hate speech better than Google and Twitter, citing an independent European Commission report. According to the independent report, Facebook gave feedback to 93.7 per cent of notifications, Instagram to 62.4 per cent of the notifications, Twitter to 43.8 per cent and YouTube only to 8.8 per cent.
Updated 11:21 IST, August 29th 2020
