As concerns swirl over hate speech and trolls on social platforms like Facebook Inc (ticker: FB) and Twitter (TWTR), efforts to combat these problems hardly go unnoticed. But Facebook’s latest endeavor in this arena is unique.
The social network has partnered with EdVentures Partners and the State Department for the groups’ “Peer to Peer: Challenging Extremism” competition approximately one year ago, where college students work to fight extremism through online campaigns as part of the contest.
The goal is for students to develop shareable, insightful content for social media, as opposed to extremists who might take advantage of messaging, reports Business Insider. The U.S. competition’s deadline was this week, though it is international. A final competition will take place in February in the District of Columbia.
One group competing in the U.S. is the University of Nebraska Omaha, whose students developed The Refugee Perspective Campaign that showcases community refugees.
“The demographics here are pretty low diversity,” professor Gina Ligon, the students’ advisor, told Business Insider. “We have a lot of college-age students who have never been exposed to a refugee or even to someone from another country. There are really great kids here, but that’s who white supremacists target, people who don’t know any different.”
Besides contributing financially to the competition, Facebook helps EdVenture Partners and the State Department train and judge it as well.
Elsewhere, Twitter announced an update to is “mute” feature last month as criticism continued to mount its abuse problem. It had also suspended hundreds of thousands of accounts for promotion of terrorism as of August.
Both Facebook and Twitter, along with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Alphabets (GOOG, GOOGL) YouTube, also recently announced a plan to combat terrorism online, TheStreet notes. Facebook is dealing with a proliferation of fake news on its platform and has a survey out to try and address deceptive headlines.
7 of the Best Stocks to Buy for 2017
13 Stocks to Buy to Bet on China
More from U.S. News
7 of the Best Stocks to Buy for 2017
13 Stocks to Buy to Bet on China
Artificial Intelligence Stocks: 10 Companies Betting on AI
Facebook Inc (FB) Looks to College Students to Help Block Extremism originally appeared on usnews.com
