Social media site Facebook is cracking down on copyright infringement, having removed almost three million ‘suspicious’ posts from the site in the first half 2017.
According to the social network’s own data, it received some 377,440 complaints in the six months to June involving allegations of videos, photos and advertisements infringing the copyright or trade marks of others.
Of the complaints received, 68 per cent related to copyright infringement and 47 per cent related to trade marks.
Facebook decided to remove 81 per cent of all offending posts, its figures reveal.
In total, this adds up to almost three million posts removed, the site’s bi-annual Transparency Report claims.
The news comes at a time when social media sites are facing criticism for not taking a proactive approach to monitoring content.
In its report, Facebook says it has been using new monitoring tools to alert rightsholders to any suspected intellectual property (IP) breaches, by scanning the site for suspected duplicates of copyrighted content.
Rightsholders who are informed of suspected infringement can then send ‘takedown requests’ to Facebook, which will be dealt with by a team of content analysts.
However, rightsholders need to follow the correct process before the team will remove suspicious content.
Facebook has said that a “small fraction” of takedown requests were excluded in the first half of 2017 because rightsholders did not submit their request through the site’s official form.
Chris Sonderby, a Deputy General Counsel at Facebook, said: “We believe that sharing information about (intellectual property) reports we receive from rights holders is an important step toward being more open and clear about how we protect the people and businesses that use our services.”