- Today, Facebook announced updates to bullying and harassment policies to better protect people.
- This will remove harmful content that attacks public figures, as well as provide more protections for public figures who have become famous involuntarily
It’s important that everyone feels safe to engage and connect with their communities. Facebook will not allow bullying and harassment in its platform, says an article published on their website.
Measures taken by Facebook
On National Bullying Prevention and Awareness Day, Facebook will now remove content that violates our policies and disable the accounts of people who repeatedly break our rules.
They also regularly pressure test their policies with safety experts, making changes as needed.
Combating Coordinated Mass Harassment
Facebook has launched a new policy that helps protect people from mass harassment and intimidation from multiple accounts.
This policy has come into action after consulting a diverse set of global stakeholders.
These tools empower people to manage unwanted or abusive interactions like blocking or unfollowing someone on Facebook and Instagram and Restrict, Hidden Words and Limits on Instagram.
To learn more about this work and the resources visit Bullying Prevention Hub on Safety Center, developed in partnership with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
About the new policy
- This will now remove coordinated efforts of mass harassment that target individuals at heightened risk of offline harm, even if the content on its own wouldn’t violate our policies.
- Removes content that is considered mass harassment towards any individual on personal surfaces, such as direct messages in inbox or comments on personal profiles or posts. We will require additional information or context to enforce this new policy.
- This will also remove state-linked and adversarial networks of accounts, Pages and Groups that work together to harass or silence people.
More Protections for Public Figures
Public figures use Facebook and Instagram to engage directly with their followers. This policy will try to strike the right balance between protecting them from abuse and allowing open dialogue about them on our apps.
Consistent with the commitments made in the corporate human rights policy, this policy will offer more protections for public figures like journalists and human rights defenders who have become famous involuntarily or because of their work.
The bullying and harassment policy differentiates between public figures and private individuals to enable freedom of expression and legitimate public discourse around those in the public eye.
Public figures shouldn’t be subjected to degrading or sexualized attacks. Based on feedback from a large number of global stakeholders, Facebook will now also remove:
- Severe sexualizing content
- Profiles, Pages, groups or events dedicated to sexualizing the public figure
- Derogatory, sexualized photoshopped images and drawings
- Attacks through negative physical descriptions that are tagged to, mention or posted on the public figure’s account
- Degrading content depicting individuals in the process of bodily functions
- remove unwanted sexualized commentary and repeated content that is sexually harassing. Because what is “unwanted” can be subjective, this will consider the additional context from the individual experiencing the abuse to take action.
Did you subscribe to our daily Newsletter?
It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe
Source: Facebook
