While technology companies all over the globe are looking into deep learning in order to thwart the efforts of live violent video exhibitionists, Facebook is taking other action.
The social media company announced this morning that it will be hiring 3,000 new employees with the sole goal of scanning the social media site looking for violent videos.
Facebook already employs many people that have the mission of finding these disturbing videos, but the company feels that they need more bodies on the job. Following the senseless murder of an eleven-month-old via Facebook live video, the company needs to step up its efforts.
Human and Machine Coverage
Artificial Intelligence is useful. But AI can’t always do what humans can do. It’s hard to teach a computer how to find all kinds of violent videos, since some types of violence aren’t action-filled. A great example is psychological violence. A computer might not understand the nuances of a torture video, for example, if that video does not include a physical act of violence.
Even though technology companies are attempting to teach computers how to find all kinds of violent acts, there will always be some gaps. This is where humans come into play - and, more specifically, Facebook’s team of violent video finders. Where machines fail, humans will (hopefully) find a way to succeed.
But even humans can’t stop determined exhibitionists.
A Constantly Shifting Problem
People that want to film live videos of violent crimes are constantly looking for ways to do so that trick social media. These people often look for ways to get around computers and humans. Once a video succeeds and thousands of people see it, humans and computers can then learn to stop those kinds of videos. However, it is only after the fact that these things are noticed and then stopped.
The situation is unfortunate. Hiring more people to attempt to stop these violent crimes is only one way to stop them from happening. The other way is through artificial intelligence, but that will take some time. In the meantime, Facebook is taking the kind of action that other companies seeking to stop this type of violence should take.
Working With the Facebook Team
If you’re passionate about stopping this kind of violence, you may want to join Facebook in its efforts to stop live videos depicting violent acts. You can check out the job openings that Facebook has available through the Facebook website. Joining this team might mean finally putting an end to all of those posts that are heartless, senseless, and disturbing to those that have the opportunity to view them.
Other companies might follow Facebook’s lead where hiring humans to spot violent videos is concerned. While it’s not the first company to do so, the new hires will make the Facebook video spotting team more than 5,000 strong.
That’s a lot of people looking for videos, but Facebook is a massive network consisting of many different people from all over the globe. Let’s hope that Facebook is effective in its efforts.