NEW YORK (US) – Social media giant Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday that the firm committed an “operational mistake” in not acting quick enough to remove the page of a militia group that gave a call for armed action in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The firm said it had removed the page of the Kenosha Guard as it violated the company policy against militia organisations.
This came after two people were shot and killed in Kenosha on Tuesday night during agitations against the shooting of a Black man by a White police officer, leaving him paralysed.
Zuckerberg said in a video message that the firm received complaints about from “a bunch of people” about the Kenosha Guard posting.
“The contractors and reviewers who the initial complaints were funneled to basically didn’t pick this up,” he said. “And on second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that’s responsible for dangerous organisations recognised that this violated the policies and we took it down.”
News website BuzzFeed referred to an internal report of Facebook which showed that the event associated with the Kenosha Guard was flagged at least 455 times, and a Facebook worker as saying it accounted for 66% of all event reports that day.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.