NPR’s episode titled ‘How Facebook Takes On Fake News and Hate Speech’ from last October goes over Facebook’s policies and how the platform deals with problems, such as relying on users reporting issues themselves.

Within the podcast, guest, Monika Bickert, the head of product policy and counterterrorism on Facebook, talks about the amount of difficultly is it to oversee all of the posts on Facebook. Bickert explains that her team greatly relies on users reporting what seems to be terrorism, what makes them uncomfortable on a large social scale, or simply content that is obviously inappropriate content.

The predominant takeaway from Bickert on NPR was her highlighting how the United States Constitution is not the same as the ‘Terms and Conditions’ of Facebook: one cannot say anything they wish to say and hate speech is not allowed on the platform.

Whether or not something is allowed or not, problems will still fall through the cracks. Many news sources have been pointing out the same thing: live streaming is not safe because it cannot be monitored on this scale (where everyone and anyone can use it).

It is incredibly important to be mindful of what we put out onto the internet. For instance, demographics such as our name, location, age and/or birthdate, education, vocation, are all variables that can be easily taken by data hunters. Behavioral psychographics, such as what we posts and talk about, share and like, and the groups we join only add to how advertisers can target us.