Facebook offers for the first time an estimate of bullying and harassment on its platforms

Facebook first released a series of reports Tuesday that revealed the prevalence of bullying and harassment on its platform, saying that for every 10,000 views on the site in the third quarter, such content appeared between 14 and 15 times.

The company, which recently changed its name to Meta, also said in its quarterly content moderation report that bullying and harassment content appeared between five and six times for every 10,000 content views on Instagram.

The social media giant, long under scrutiny for its handling of abuse on its services, has been in the limelight after a former employee and now whistleblower, Frances Haugen, leaked internal documents including investigations and discussions about the effects of Instagram on adolescent mental health and whether Facebook platforms fuel divisions.

Haugen has said the documents show that the company privileged profits over user safety. Facebook rejected the description, saying the documents were being used to paint a “false image ”.

The documents, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, have encouraged calls for Facebook to be more transparent and have raised questions about whether metrics such as prevalence provide a complete picture of how the company handles abuse.

Facebook said its bullying and harassment numbers only captured cases where the company did not need additional information, such as a report from a user, to decide whether the content violated its rules.

The company said that of the 9.2 million pieces of content it removed from Facebook, for breaking its bullying and harassment rules, it found 59.4% proactively.

“Bullying and harassment is a unique challenge and one of the most complex issues to address because the context is critical“The company’s global chief security officer, Antigone Davis, and director of product management, Amit Bhattacharyya, said in a blog post.