Facebook Clarifies Banning Policy

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Facebook Clarifies Banning Policy

Facebook-clarifies-banning-policy
A Facebook notification bar. Photo by JaysonPhotography/Shutterstock.com

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 16 (UPI) — Facebook released an updated version of its banning policy for offensive content on users’ pages.

The goal was to set clear guidelines about what is and is not allowed to be posted on Facebook after the company was criticized for flip-flopping on the issue.

Pages for the Islamic State and similar groups have always been banned, but now any pages supporting groups involved in “violent, criminal or hateful behavior” have also been banned.

Cyber bullying and threats of financial or physical harm are now banned. It has also specifically prohibited “revenge porn” from being posted.

“We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks,”says the new policy. Select images of women’s breasts are banned if too much nipple is exposed, “but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breast-feeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring.”

“We’re trying to strike the balance based on the way our community works,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, told the New York Times. “The landscape is complicated.”

Facebook will not monitor and scan the website itself. It will rely on users to report offensive content which Facebook will then review.

The company is also trying to become more transparent.

Facebook released reports on the requests it receives for information from users’ respective governments.

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