The announcement comes after over a dozen major advertisers suspended their campaigns on Facebook until they were promised the ads would not appear alongside hateful comments or pages. Companies that pulled their ads over the last few days include Nissan and Nationwide Bank in the UK.

The companies have moved to at least temporarily remove advertising as a result of a campaign run by Women, Action and the Media, who committed to taking action on “gender-based hate speech on Facebook”. The group urged Facebook to more proactively act against comments or jokes “endorsing violence against women”. The campaign provoked thousands of emails to Facebook and supportive comments on Twitter.

In a blog post vowing changes and improvements to current procedures, Facebook’s safety team write 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. In some cases, content is not being removed as quickly as we want... We need to do better – and we will.”

They go on to promise improvements to staff training, guidelines and lines of communications with relevant interest groups. They also suggest they will make posters of ‘insensitive’ comments more accountable by requiring them to post content under their ‘authentic identity’.

Women, Action and the Media have welcomed the move, releasing a statement hoping “that this moment will mark an historic transition in relation to media and women’s rights in which Facebook is acknowledged as a leader in fostering safer, genuinely inclusive online communities, setting industry precedents for others to follow.”