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Facebook Now Deleting 66K Posts a Week in Anti-Hate Campaign

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Facebook logos are pictured on the screens of a smartphone and a laptop computer in central London on Nov. 21, 2016. (Justin Tallis/Getty images)

Facebook said Tuesday that it deleted about 66,000 posts a week in the last two months as the social media giant cracks down on what it considers to be hate speech.

The company said in a blog post that deleting posts can “feel like censorship,” but that it is working on explaining its process better and improving its enforcement of hate speech.

Facebook said it defines hate speech as attacks on people based on their race, sexual orientation and other “protected characteristics.” The Menlo Park company said it mostly relies on its nearly 2 billion users to report any hateful posts they see. Workers then review the posts and decide whether to delete them.

Facebook Inc. said it plans to hire an additional 3,000 people in the next year to review posts. That’s on top of the 4,500 people it currently has reviewing posts.

It has made mistakes, the company said. Last year it deleted the post of a black activist, who had posted hate mail he received that included slurs. Facebook said it restored the post and apologized.

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“We know that these kinds of mistakes are deeply upsetting for the people involved and cut against the grain of everything we are trying to achieve at Facebook,” said Facebook Vice President Richard Allan, in the blog post.

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