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Facebook failed to remove child nudity and sexual exploitation content from Instagram due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its content moderation system, the tech giant has claimed.
The company sent content reviewers home in March as part of Covid-19 containment measures without adequate work-from-home systems in place, the firm revealed in its quarterly Community Standards Enforcement Report.
This forced Facebook to prioritise the reviewal of certain harmful content over others between April and June on its social network and Instagram.
Automated systems are also in place to detect harmful content, however humans are still needed to identify and remove content flagged by users.
"We rely heavily on people to review suicide and self-injury and child exploitative content, and help improve the technology that proactively finds and removes identical or near-identical content that violates these policies," Guy Rosen, Facebook's Vice President of Integrity, wrote in a blog post.
"With fewer content reviewers, we took action on fewer pieces of content on both Facebook and Instagram for suicide and self-injury, and child nudity and sexual exploitation on Instagram."
Facebook said it has since brought "many reviewers" back online from home, while also bringing "a smaller number" back into the office where it is safe.
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1/15 Facebook is born
On 4 Feb, 2004, 19-year-old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched a website called 'TheFacebook' from his dorm. Within 24 hours the college social network had more than 1,000 users
Wikimedia Commons
2/15 Winklevoss twins sue Zuckerberg
Within one week of launching, fellow Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. It would be four years later when the resulting lawsuit was finally settled
3/15 Open for business
The social network finally opened it platform to everyone on 26 September, 2006. The move proved the catalyst in supercharging the site's already explosive growth
PA
4/15 Billion-dollar bid
Yahoo offered $1 billion to buy Facebook in September 2006 but Zuckerberg turned it down. 'I don’t know what I could do with the money,' Zuckerberg reportedly said. 'I’d just start another social networking site'
Reuters
5/15 In the money
In September 2009, almost five years since the site launched, Facebook turned a profit for the first time
Getty Images/iStockphoto
6/15 Taking the lead
Facebook overtook MySpace in 2010 to become the world’s most popular social network
7/15 Taking on the tech giants
In 2011, Google launched its own social network that it hoped would knock Facebook from its perch. Despite its initial success, Google+ ultimately failed and will be shut down completely in 2019
Getty
8/15 Facebook goes public
On 18 May, 2012, Facebook went public. The initial public offering raised $16 billion – the third largest in US history
9/15 Gobbling up the competition
Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012 for $1 billion, consolidating its position as the world's leading social network
Reuters
10/15 One billion users
On 4 October, 2012, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had hit 1 billion users. 'If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honour of serving you,' he wrote in a blog post
Getty Images
11/15 Expanding its empire
In February 2014 Facebook acquired the messaging app WhatsApp for $19.3 billion
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
12/15 Two billion users
In June 2017, Facebook passed the 2 billion user milestone
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
13/15 Privacy scandal
On 17 March 2018, news broke that UK firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from around 87 million Facebook users for the purpose of political profiling in the build up to the 2016 US presidential elections
Shutterstock
14/15 Record profits
Despite the scandals and subsequent #DeleteFacebook campaign, Facebook posted record profits just before its 15th anniversary, the equivalent of $7.37 from each of its 2.32 billions users
iStock/Independent
15/15 Unhappy users
A study found that people are happier when they don’t use Facebook, adding to mounting evidence surrounding the impact social media has on mental health
Rex Features
1/15 Facebook is born
On 4 Feb, 2004, 19-year-old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched a website called 'TheFacebook' from his dorm. Within 24 hours the college social network had more than 1,000 users
Wikimedia Commons
2/15 Winklevoss twins sue Zuckerberg
Within one week of launching, fellow Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. It would be four years later when the resulting lawsuit was finally settled
3/15 Open for business
The social network finally opened it platform to everyone on 26 September, 2006. The move proved the catalyst in supercharging the site's already explosive growth
PA
4/15 Billion-dollar bid
Yahoo offered $1 billion to buy Facebook in September 2006 but Zuckerberg turned it down. 'I don’t know what I could do with the money,' Zuckerberg reportedly said. 'I’d just start another social networking site'
Reuters
5/15 In the money
In September 2009, almost five years since the site launched, Facebook turned a profit for the first time
Getty Images/iStockphoto
6/15 Taking the lead
Facebook overtook MySpace in 2010 to become the world’s most popular social network
7/15 Taking on the tech giants
In 2011, Google launched its own social network that it hoped would knock Facebook from its perch. Despite its initial success, Google+ ultimately failed and will be shut down completely in 2019
Getty
8/15 Facebook goes public
On 18 May, 2012, Facebook went public. The initial public offering raised $16 billion – the third largest in US history
9/15 Gobbling up the competition
Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012 for $1 billion, consolidating its position as the world's leading social network
Reuters
10/15 One billion users
On 4 October, 2012, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had hit 1 billion users. 'If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honour of serving you,' he wrote in a blog post
Getty Images
11/15 Expanding its empire
In February 2014 Facebook acquired the messaging app WhatsApp for $19.3 billion
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
12/15 Two billion users
In June 2017, Facebook passed the 2 billion user milestone
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
13/15 Privacy scandal
On 17 March 2018, news broke that UK firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from around 87 million Facebook users for the purpose of political profiling in the build up to the 2016 US presidential elections
Shutterstock
14/15 Record profits
Despite the scandals and subsequent #DeleteFacebook campaign, Facebook posted record profits just before its 15th anniversary, the equivalent of $7.37 from each of its 2.32 billions users
iStock/Independent
15/15 Unhappy users
A study found that people are happier when they don’t use Facebook, adding to mounting evidence surrounding the impact social media has on mental health
Rex Features
Despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook said it had made improvements in certain areas such as terrorism and hate speech.
This was due to technological improvements of its moderation system, which allowed Facebook to take action on 8.7 million terrorist-related posts in the latest quarter compared to 6.3m in the previous quarter.
Facebook also cracked down on misinformation relating to Covid-19, such as conspiracy theories linking the virus to the roll-out of 5G networks.
"In the past months, we've prioritised work around harmful content related to Covid-19 that could put people at risk," Mr Rosen told reporters during a press call on Tuesday.
"If some misinformation poses imminent harm, we remove it. So from April through June, we removed over 7 million pieces of harmful Covid-19 misinformation from Facebook and Instagram."
Warning labels were also placed on certain posts that contained misleading or false information about coronavirus.
Facebook has recently joined other tech platforms by flagging posts shared by US President Donald Trump for breaking its rules relating to misinformation, though these were not covered within the timeframe of the report.
"As the Covid-19 pandemic evolves, we'll continue adapting our content review process and working to improve our technology and bring more reviewers back online," the report concluded.