Facebook has updated its community standards policy in an effort to add detail and provide clarity on what is and isn’t allowed to be posted on the social network.
The Community Standards page has been divided into into four sections: ‘Helping to keep you safe’, ‘Encouraging respectful behavior’, ‘Keeping your account and personal information secure’, and ‘Protecting your intellectual property’.
While no radical changes have been made to its community guidelines, Facebook have expanded certain areas to provide more guidance on policies relating to self-injury, bullying and harassment, criminal activity, sexual violence and exploitation, nudity, hate speech, and graphic content.
For example, the section on encouraging respectful behavior clarifies what is considered hate speech, but adds that humour, satire or social commentary relating to hate speech is permissible, particularly if page administrators associate their name and with content that may be considered insensitive.
“It’s a challenge to maintain one set of standards that meets the needs of a diverse global community,” wrote Monika Bickert, the company’s head of global policy management, and Chris Sonderby, deputy general counsel, in a news release.
“For one thing, people from different backgrounds may have different ideas about what’s appropriate to share – a video posted as a joke by one person might be upsetting to someone else, but it may not violate our standards.”
Facebook has also released a short video to announce the changes. Click below to watch.
Facebook image via Shutterstock
