NEW YORK — Facebook said Tuesday that it has deleted about 66,000 posts a week in the past two months as the social media giant cracks down on what it deems to be hate speech.

The company said in a blog post that deleting posts can “feel like censorship,” but that it is working on explaining its process better and improving its enforcement of hate speech.

A Facebook page launches on an iPhone. The company defines hate speech as attacks based on race, sexual orientation and other "protected characteristics." Associated Presds/Elise Amendola

Facebook defines hate speech as attacks on people based on their race, sexual orientation and other “protected characteristics.” The Menlo Park, California, company said it mostly relies on its 2 billion users to report any hateful posts they see. Workers then review the posts and decide whether to delete them.

Facebook Inc. said it plans to hire an additional 3,000 people in the next year to review posts. That’s on top of the 4,500 people it currently has reviewing posts.

It has made mistakes, the company said. Last year it deleted the post of a black activist who had posted hate mail he received that included slurs. Facebook said it restored the post and apologized.

“We know that these kinds of mistakes are deeply upsetting for the people involved and cut against the grain of everything we are trying to achieve at Facebook,” Vice President Richard Allan said in the blog post.

Last week, Google said it was cracking down on terrorist propaganda and other extremist videos on its YouTube site amid intensifying criticism about the internet’s role in mass violence. It also said it was hiring more people to monitor hate and extremism online, and to prevent its dissemination through YouTube.

Related Stories