Facebook’s newly appointed EMEA vice-president Nicola Mendelsohn pledged the social networking firm will strive to rapidly take down contentious content, in the wake of being targeted over allowing users to post beheading videos.
According to Mendelsohn, the decision by the social networking site to allow controversial content to be posted is based on its mission to make the world more open and connected.
"We don’t want to have a platform where people share things for the sake of sharing gruesome horrible things, that’s not the point,"Mendelsohn told the Marketing Week magazine.
"But if people are in the business of wanting to share things that could maybe change society for the better, then that’s something that would raise this debate."
Mendelsohn joined Facebook as the vice-president of EMEA operations in May replacing Joanna Shields, who joined the UK government’s Tech City Investment Organisation.
"What’s also clear is that we want to protect our advertisers and we have a very clear policy that advertising will not appear against something they would not be comfortable with," Mendelsohn added.
"That said, users post 4.7 billion different pieces of content each day and from time to time there will be issues that will test the policy, so we will come back to them and we will be much quicker in terms of how we respond."
Mendelsohn defended the social networking firm against criticism that it had not paid UK corporation tax in the last year, despite generating digital advertising revenue of £223m during the year.
Facebook joins other US technology firms in transferring their UK sales via Ireland, which has low corporation tax rates.
