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Facebook Releases May 2020 Community Standards Enforcement Report

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Facebook has published the fifth edition of its Community Standards Enforcement Report, providing metrics on how well it enforced its policies from October 2019 through March 2020.

Announcing the report in a Facebook Newsroom post, Guy Rosen, Vice President, Integrity said the company has in the last few years built tools, teams and technologies to help protect elections from interference, prevent misinformation from spreading on its apps and keep people safe from harmful content.

“So when the COVID-19 crisis emerged, we had the tools and processes in place to move quickly and we were able to continue finding and removing content that violates our policies.

“When we temporarily sent our content reviewers home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we increased our reliance on these automated systems and prioritized high-severity content for our teams to review in order to continue to keep our apps safe during this time,” he said.

The report, he said, includes data only through March 2020, so it does not reflect the full impact of the changes the company made during the pandemic.

“We anticipate we’ll see the impact of those changes in our next report, and possibly beyond, and we will be transparent about them.

“For example, for the past seven weeks we couldn’t always offer the option to appeal content decisions and account removals, so we expect the number of appeals to be much lower in our next report.

“We also prioritized removing harmful content over measuring our efforts, so we may not be able to calculate the prevalence of violating content during this time. Today’s report shows the impact of advancements we’ve made in the technology we use to proactively find and remove violating content,” Rosen said.

For the first time, the report includes metrics across 12 policies on Facebook and metrics across 10 policies on Instagram. The report introduces Instagram data in four issue areas, namely: Hate Speech, Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity, Violent and Graphic Content, and Bullying and Harassment.

Also for the first time, the report shared data on the number of appeals people make on content the company took action against on Instagram, and the number of decisions overturned either based on those appeals or when it identifies the issue on its own. The report also contains data on Facebook’s efforts to combat organized hate on Facebook and Instagram.

Highlights the progress the company has made so far in finding and removing violating content, Rosen said Facebook has improved its technology that proactively finds violating content, which helped in the removal of more violating content so fewer people saw it.

Said Rosen: “On Facebook, we continued to expand our proactive detection technology for hate speech to more languages, and improved our existing detection systems.

“Our proactive detection rate for hate speech increased by more than 8 points over the past two quarters totalling almost a 20-point increase in just one year.

“As a result, we are able to find more content and can now detect almost 90% of the content we remove before anyone reports it to us. In addition, thanks to other improvements we made to our detection technology, we doubled the amount of drug content we removed in Q4 2019, removing 8.8 million pieces of content.

“On Instagram, we made improvements to our text and image matching technology to help us find more suicide and self-injury content. As a result, we increased the amount of content we took action on by 40% and increased our proactive detection rate by more than 12 points since the last report.

“We also made progress in our work combating online bullying by introducing several new features to help people manage their experience and limit unwanted interactions, and we announced new Instagram controls today. We are sharing enforcement data for bullying on Instagram for the first time in this report, including taking action on 1.5 million pieces of content in both Q4 2019 and Q1 2020.”

Lastly, improvements to Facebook’s technology for finding and removing content similar to existing violations in our databases helped the company take down more child nudity and sexual exploitative content on Facebook and Instagram, Rosen disclosed.

Over the last six months, he said, Facebook has started to use technology more to prioritize content for its teams to review based on factors like virality and severity among others.

Going forward, it plans to leverage technology to also take action on content, including removing more posts automatically. This will enable our content reviewers to focus their time on other types of content where more nuance and context are needed to make a decision.

The Community Standards Enforcement Report is published in conjunction with Facebook’s bi-annual Transparency Report that shares numbers on government requests for user data, content restrictions based on local law, intellectual property take-downs and internet disruptions.

“In the future we’ll share Community Standards Enforcement Reports quarterly, so our next report will be released in August,” he said.


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E-Business

StarNews, Global Black Economic Forum Launch Business Competition In Partnership with MTN & USAID

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Africa’s leading video streaming platform, StarNews Mobile and the Global Black Economic Forum (GBEF), have announced a call for applications for the launch of their Business Competition in Lagos, Nigeria.

Held in partnership with MTN and United Nations Agency for International Development (USAID), the initiative will empower Nigeria’s most promising businesses that are classified as Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with invaluable investment and partnership opportunities from the USA.

Held over 10 weeks between April 8th to June 14th, hosted exclusively on the StarNews Biz Channel on the StarNews platform, this competition offers a platform for emerging entrepreneurs to showcase their ventures and gain national visibility.

With subscribers voting for their favourite candidates, the top 20 contestants will seize the spotlight and make their mark on the business landscape.

The StarNews Business Competition in partnership with GBEF delivers a unique opportunity for thriving Nigerian SMEs to access mentoring, funding, partnerships and socio-economic development tools through the Global Black Economic Forum.

With the prospect of securing cash prizes through StarNews worth up to NGN5,000,000, getting access to StarNews’s network of investors and the opportunity to gain national visibility by having their business on the StarNews web platform.

The top three winners will also receive coaching from GBEF’s Academy for Advancing Excellence and become part of GBEF’s ecosystem of global leaders committed to social and economic justice across the Black Diaspora.

Previous speakers at GBEF convenings from the entertainment sector include Wyclef Jean (Haitian Musician & Activist), Debra Lee (Former CEO of Black Entertainment Television – BET) and Ceci Kurzman (Founder of Nexus Management Group). Applications will close on April 5th 2024.

Speaking on the competition’s launch, Guy Kamgaing, Founder and CEO at StarNews Mobile, says “The StarNews Business Competition is a passion project close to our hearts at StarNews Mobile.

It’s about discovering the most promising business entrepreneurs and creators in Nigeria, opening up global opportunities for them and providing them with the resources and tools to achieve their goals.

By partnering with MTN, USAID and GBEF, we want to be a platform of empowerment for these SMEs by helping them give back to the communities that are supporting them.”

According to the US Embassy and Consulate for Nigeria, over 80% of Nigerian startups are incorporated in the United States and more than 60% of venture capital funding in Nigerian startups accounted for by the US.

In 2023 alone, Nigerian startups raised a total of $398mn however, this signalled a 66% funding decline compared to 2022 due to the global economic downturn, reinforcing the massive need for a fresh injection of capital and business support for Nigeria’s emerging SMEs.

Alphonso David, President and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum notes that, “Our partnership with StarNews Mobile is a critical resource as we continue to build the collective strength of entrepreneurship across the Diaspora.

“Building a sustainable ecosystem of Black entrepreneurs in the United States and across the African continent is essential to create a future that makes economic opportunity and economic freedom a reality for all.”

A sister company to ESSENCE, GBEF advances its work by convening global summits and conferences, bringing together world leaders, business leaders, entrepreneurs, celebrities and civic leaders to address the most challenging problems facing our communities.

GBEF’s Academy for Advancing Excellence facilitates workforce and leadership development strategy, addressing the talent pipeline & employee lifecycle, providing leadership development & coaching, and conducting institutional assessments & research.

GBEF also develops and implements economic and social justice policy recommendations with partners ranging from civil and human rights organisations to government entities and corporations that advocate for economic opportunity, social justice, and health equity through thought leadership, advocacy and litigation.

Launched in 2017, StarNews Mobile empowers African content creators with the unique opportunity to monetize their work through a subscription model, boasting over 4 million subscribers and a thriving community of more than 120 content creators.

With a strong presence across six countries including Cameroon, Nigeria, Côte D’Ivoire, Congo, Benin and Ghana, the platform has also established key partnerships with major telecom operators such as MTN and Orange.

To-date, StarNews Mobile has secured over $8mn in funding with its most recent raise – a $3mn pre-Series A funding round in October 2023 – led by Janngo Capital with participation from French football players Aurélien Tchouaméni, Jules Koundé and Mike Maignan.

 


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Companies Invest More than $100,000 Yearly to Upskill their Cybersecurity Teams – Study Reveals

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Over 70% of businesses pay more than USD $100,000 for additional training annually to keep skills of their cybersecurity employees up to date, a recent global Kaspersky study has revealed.

However, the surveyed companies also highlighted that there was a lack of relevant courses covering new challenging spheres in the educational market and stated that training does not always bring them the expected result.

In its recent study ‘The portrait of the modern Information Security professional’, Kaspersky examined the topic of the global cybersecurity staff shortage, analysing the exact reasons businesses lack cybersecurity experts, and identifying the ways they evaluate and upskill their cybersecurity workforce¹.

According to the research, companies are investing significant amounts in upskilling their cybersecurity teams: 43% of organisations globally say they usually spend between $100,000 and $200,000 per year on information security courses, while 31% even invest over $200,000 for training programs. The remaining 26% state they usually pay less than $100,000 for educational initiatives².

However, cybersecurity practitioners also note that the educational market is struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing industry and fail to deliver the necessary training programs on time.

Survey results for the Middle East, Turkiye, Africa (META) region shows that the scarcity of courses covering new challenging spheres (48%) was the main problem for those searching for cybersecurity training.

50% of respondents from the META region also stated that trainees tend to forget what they learned because they had no opportunity to apply newly acquired knowledge, therefore the courses were useless to them.

The need for special training pre-requisites such as coding and advanced mathematics, which were not specified at the pre-registration stage were also problematic for 37% of practitioners from the META region.

“With a constantly evolving threat landscape, businesses should continually improve the skills of their cybersecurity personnel in order to be well prepared for sophisticated cyberattacks.

“Developing high-profile specialists within the company and building internal expertise can be an effective strategy for organisations that aim to retain existing employees and allow them to grow professionally, instead of constantly hunting for new candidates and checking their professional backgrounds and practical skills.

“For organisations served by Managed Service Providers it is also important to maintain a pretty high level of expertise internally and use the same language when discussing the scope of services and Service Level Agreement with them,” comments Veniamin Levtsov, VP, Center of Corporate Business Expertise at Kaspersky.


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Heirs Insurance Launches User-friendly Website for Stakeholders

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Heirs Insurance Group, Nigeria’s fastest growing insurance group, has launched a new website that delivers the most user-friendly insurance experience in the industry.

Heirs Insurance Launches User-friendly Website for Stakeholders

In addition to its features that aid simple navigation, the website also personalizes the insurance experience taking customers through a short journey that enables them to make decisions quickly on the best insurance plan to support their personal and business success, or access competent insurance advisors to speak with.

According to Ifesinachi Okpagu, chief marketing officer, Heirs Insurance Group, the website, www.heirs insurance group.com, embodies the ethos of the brand: the delivery of simple, quick, and accessible insurance service that delights customers and brings the uninsured much closer to taking up insurance plans.

She said: “Today’s customers want simplicity and this new website delivers on that request, ensuring that people find the right insurance solutionsfor their needs in a few minutes. We are empowering customers to take control of their lives, their businesses, assets, and their most cherished people.” Heirs Insurance Group has been at the forefront of pioneering a new era of insurance solutions since its launch with the roll-out of various initiatives including a seamless mobile app, USSD; Prince, its intuitive chatbot; InConnect, its partnership portal Digital Experience Centre; and more. With the launch of this website, Heirs Insurance Group solidifies its position as the leading digital insurance company in Nigeria, democratising access to insurance for all.


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