Facebook pledges moderation review - FT.com Facebook has committed to review and improve its online moderation procedures after several advertisers including Nationwide, the UK's largest building society, and Nissan, the Japanese carmaker, pulled their advertising following concerns over offensive content. In an online update, the social networking site admitted that in recent days "it has become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate." The company said that, starting immediately, it would "review and update the guidelines that our user operations team uses to evaluate reports of violations of our community standards around hate speech." The group also said it would "solicit feedback" from legal experts and from women's rights campaigners "to ensure that these guidelines reflect best practices." It also committed to update the training of individuals on its moderation teams. In recent days, women's rights campaigners have highlighted the publication on Facebook of misogynistic content, including images of abused women. The campaigners had urged Twitter users to pressure brands whose ads had appeared next to this content to stop advertising on the site. This campaign started to have an impact with several advertisers pulling their campaigns. The placement of brands" adverts next to the offensive content reflects targeted advertising techniques that follow users rather than individual pages. These techniques identify individuals who are likely to buy a particular product and then automatically places ads for that product on whatever page he or she visits. Adverts for Nissan, Nationwide, Unilever's Dove skincare brand, were automatically placed next to the offensive images that Facebook users either sought out or stumbled upon accidentally. Nationwide said earlier this week that it had pulled its Facebook adverts pending resolution of the situation. Both companies said they had not been aware that their ads had been placed on the pages in question. Whether these latest initiatives from Facebook will be enough to encourage advertisers to return to its site remains to be seen. Even with improved moderation safeguards, advertising executives have raised concerns that ads could appear next to offensive content before moderators at Facebook take action. Representatives of brand advertisers have also called on Facebook to introduce technological solutions to ensure that ads do not appear next to offensive content.