As the number of terrorist attacks continue to increase globally, Facebook is making an attempt to be completely transparent about its plans to keep terrorist content off its website. To make efforts more efficient, the company enlisted the help of both artificial intelligence and human expertise.
To kick off the initiative, Facebook introduced a thread called “Hard Questions” as a safe space to discuss complicated subjects. The first post within the thread is titled “How We Counter Terrorism” and written by Monika Bickert, Facebook’s director of global policy management, and Brian Fishman, counterterrorism policy manager, who explain in detail how Facebook is committed to making the platform a hostile environment for terrorists.
The post lists a number of current tactics that use AI, including image matching — where systems search for whether or not an uploaded image matches any terrorism content previously removed by Facebook — to prevent other accounts from posting the same photo or video. Another experiment Facebook is currently running involves analyzing text previously removed for supporting terrorist organizations in an effort to create text-based signals. This will help to strengthen the algorithm in place so it catches similar posts at a quicker speed.
To prevent AI from flagging a photo related to terrorism in a post like a news story, human judgment is still required. In order to ensure constant monitoring, the community operations team works 24 hours a day and its members are also skilled in dozens of languages. The company also added more people to its team of terrorism and safety specialists specifically — ranging from former prosecutors to engineers — whose responsibility is to concentrate solely on countering terrorism.
Facebook will continue to see employee growth after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to expand the community operations team by adding 3,000 more employees across the globe — this decision came after a string of violent deaths and incidents were broadcast over Facebook Live. By having a larger team of reviewers, Zuckerberg pointed out that inappropriate content can be taken down faster and the response rate for those in danger can potentially be higher.
The company continues to develop different partnerships with researchers, governments, and other companies — including Microsoft, YouTube, and Twitter. These businesses continuously contribute to a database that’s specifically meant for gathering terrorist content.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.