Facebook to add 500 hate-speech erasers

Facebook said it's adding 500 content-control employees in Germany and bolstering psychological support for workers who delete hate speech from its site, as it faces pressure in the country to crack down on offensive posts.

The social media company plans to start adding workers from the Austrian outsourcing firm Competence Call Center in the western German city of Essen over the next few months, Facebook said in a post on its German site last week.

They'll supplement what will be 700 post-deleting workers in Berlin who work for Arvato, a unit of Bertelsmann. The 1,200 employees will work under the direction of Facebook's so-called community operations team, based in Dublin, and respond to reports by Facebook users.

The issue of violent or hateful postings on the world's largest social network has gained currency in Germany -- where Facebook has 30 million members. The country's parliamentary lower house in June passed legislation threatening fines of up to $59 million on large social networks that fail to let users report hate speech or fake news stories, or to remove illegal postings.

The company also is building up psychological care resources for the content-fighting workers and speeding up escalation of what it called "difficult decisions" about posts. In total, Facebook has said it's expanding its content-control workforce to 7,500 worldwide.

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