Facebook Spends IDR 185 Trillion To Overcome The Safety And Security Of Its Platform
JAKARTA - More than 13 billion US dollars or equivalent to Rp. 185 trillion has been invested by Facebook to address the safety and security of its platform since 2016. This information comes days after a newspaper The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said that Facebook failed to correct the adverse effects of social media according to researchers.
According to internal Facebook documents, it said the company had been indifferent to the negative effects on teenage users on its Instagram app, and had a weak response to warnings raised by employees about how the platform is being used in developing countries by people smugglers.
"In the past, we didn't address safety and security challenges early enough in the product development process. But we've fundamentally changed that approach," Facebook said as quoted by The Verge, Wednesday, September 22.
Now Facebook has 40,000 people working in safety and security, compared to 10,000 just five years ago.
"Today, we're embedding a team that focuses specifically on safety and security issues directly into the product development team, allowing us to address these issues throughout our product development process, not after," Facebook said.
Facebook executive Nick Clegg issued a rebuttal over the weekend, accusing the WSJ of misrepresentation and intentional misrepresentation of what Facebook was doing. Much of Facebook's new response reconstitutes the more positive allegations from the WSJ, not focusing on whether it's too late, but responding based on data.
Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg's social media platform says its artificial intelligence technology has helped it block three billion fake accounts in the first half of this year. The company also removed more than 20 million pieces of fake COVID-19 information and vaccine content.
They have also removed 15 times more content that violates its current standards on hate speech on Facebook and Instagram than when they first started reporting it in 2017.