Social media networks are the place to gather, to share and communicate with those that you know, and don't know. There is no description of their limitation and their growth are staggering. As they all become bigger and more influential, there are pretty much controversial things posted. And without any rules or boundaries, shared materials could get bad to worse.
There are no 'standards' these days when it comes to posting things online. But when things go sour, like for example, after a controversial post becoming an online harassment, stated rules of community courtesy can be the greatest tools.
On March 16th, 2015, the social giant Facebook is taking new steps to redesign its Community Standards page to make it easier to read at a glance and better explain how it handles 'sensitive' subjects such as nudity on its network, the censorship of terrorist groups and other behavior that people would rather not see.
The aim is to provide a rule in which the users should act, rather than the usual obligations about how Facebook will act if its sees something unacceptable. The rule is a simple knowledge that is made to provide safety for its users, encouraging respectable behavior, keeping personal things personal, embracing diversity, protecting intellectual property, and giving users the tool to control what they see.
"These policies will help you understand what type of sharing is allowed on Facebook, and what type of content may be reported to us and removed," said Facebook.
Facebook's redesigned Community Standards includes a separate section to explain types of post that is allowed to be posted. The company hopes that the guidelines can provide "clarity".
Clarifying the Confusion
There are times that Facebook removed a users post that it thinks violated its standards. Some users were confused because there were no guidelines about how a post should or shouldn't be.
Monika Bicket, Facebook's Head of Content Policy, said that the rewrite was intended to address confusion about why some takedown requests were rejected. "We [would] send them a message saying we're not removing it because it doesn't violate our standards, and they would write in and say I'm confused about this, so we would certainly hear that kind of feedback," she said.
"And people had questions about what we meant when we said we don't allow bullying, or exactly what our policy was on terrorism.
"[For example] we now make clear that not only do we not allow terrorist organizations or their members within the Facebook community, but we also don't permit praise or support for terror groups or their acts or their leaders, which wasn't something that was detailed before."
The policies themselves had not changed, the new guidelines is just made to strengthen it.
Details on the Subjects
The updated guidelines is about three times as long as before, running to nearly 2,500 words. The section goes pretty deep about some particular subjects in more details than before.
The section of nudity for example, is explaining more clearly and more detailed than the limited previous version. Facebook states that images "focusing in on fully exposed buttocks" are banned, as are "images of female breasts if they include the nipple". And those also include digitally-created graphics, unless for educational or satirical purposes.
Facebook adds that it will "always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring."
The same goes or text-based posts. Descriptions of sexual acts that contain "vivid detail" are also forbidden.
Other sections with new details include other type of posts that are forbidden:
- Bullying: Images that are altered to "degrade" an individual and videos of physical bullying, posted to shame the victim.
- Hate speech: People are still allowed to share others' hate speech to raise awareness of the issue, but they must "clearly indicate" that this is their purpose.
- Criminal activity: Celebrating or explaining committed crimes, but adds that they are allowed to propose the legality of illegal activities.
- Self-injury: Any content that identifies victimes and targets them for attack, even it's delivered in a humorous manner.
Conclusion
Facebook has came a long way to become this big. With users all over the world, coming from different races, religions, ethnics, and languages, it's about time that Facebook has something to govern all those posts. Beside relying on the 'usual' Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, the Community Standards is a simple 'reminder' of a 'norm', acceptable to all no matter who they are.
Rather than explaining what it will do when something bad happens, the updated guidelines is to make sure that people is not starting any of those violation in order to 'save themselves'.