Finally revealed: Why Facebook took down your post
San Jose Mercury News
Facebook, which has faced many a high-profile controversy over policing content on its massive platform, has revealed its internal community standards for the first time.
The company gives a glimpse into how it decides what to do about threats of violence, depiction of crime, sales of drugs and firearms, exploitation of children. The standards also address hate speech, nudity and sex, intellectual property and what Facebook calls false news.
“The guidelines will help people understand where we draw the line on nuanced issues,” said Monika Bickert, vice president of Global Policy Management, in a blog post Tuesday. She added that making the standards’ details accessible will help inform user and expert feedback.
For example, Facebook has always said it does not allow terrorists, murderers, hate organizations. Now we know the company defines a hate organization as one with “three or more people that is organized under a name, sign, or symbol and that has an ideology, statements, or physical actions that attack individuals based on characteristics, including race, religious affiliation, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, serious disease or disability.”
On nudity—an area where Facebook users might feel the company has been inconsistent on its enforcement—the standards prohibit posts that show sexual intercourse, genitalia, erections, exposed female nipples “except in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness, or gender confirmation surgery), or an act of protest.”
A couple of years ago, Facebook famously removed a post of the famous, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showing a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack. The company changed its mind after widespread outcry.
Facebook has also been embroiled in different controversies over its removals of images of breastfeeding women.
More recently, false information on Facebook has been said to be a factor in violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka. Officials and other people there complain that Facebook did nothing about requests to delete content, and to establish a direct line of communication with the company as the violence progressed, the New York Times reported over the weekend.
“Balancing free speech and safety is a challenge both on and off Facebook,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post Tuesday. “We’ll continue working hard to get this right for our community.”
Facebook’s community standards can be found at https://www.facebook.com/community-standards/ introduction/