Charlotte, N.C. — The State Attorney General’s Office will investigate whether the social media platform has taken appropriate steps to remove hateful and discriminatory content on its platform, state Sen. Bob Rucho said Thursday.
The investigation is focused on whether Facebook has taken steps to take down offensive content or prevent it from appearing in future ads, Ruchos office said in a statement.
The office did not say how it planned to determine whether the company has taken any action to remove offensive material.
Facebook said in March that it had been reviewing reports that the site had removed content that incited violence against people on its site.
The state’s attorney General’s office said the office was not looking into whether the platform had removed any content that promotes hate.
Ruchoi said in April that the office had launched an investigation into whether Facebook had broken the law in removing content from its platform.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Ruckelshaus spokesman David Ruckels said the company had not yet determined whether it had taken any actions to remove hate speech.
The comments on posts about violence against women, Ruckles said, are “clearly offensive.”
Ruchosi also said that Facebook had taken steps during the investigation to ensure that people who made offensive posts were not exposed to the same level of scrutiny that could be applied to posts about terrorism.
Rochos office declined to say what steps Facebook had undertaken to ensure people were not vulnerable to having their posts exposed to scrutiny, citing privacy concerns.
The inquiry comes amid heightened concern about anti-Semitism on social media.
Last week, a former Facebook employee, Arielle Hsu, posted a message that appeared to be a hate speech message against a transgender woman, saying she was a threat to her life and had “no future in this world.”
The company said in its announcement that it has taken the action to ensure it takes the content posted by its users seriously.
Facebook has said it has removed about 5 million hate speech posts in the past year.
