A Brief Overview of Updated Facebook Community Standards

Facebook Community Standards highlight the kind of posts that can get you banned from accessing the platform. It also contours the type of users it doesn’t permit to post. Diving deep into the update, I figured out what is allowed in the guideline and what isn’t.

As per Facebook Community Standards, they have divided the types of unacceptable content and posts into six various categories. These include ‘Safety’, ‘Integrity and Authenticity’, ‘Violence and Criminal Behaviour’, ‘Objectionable Content’, ‘Content-Related requests’ and ‘Respecting Intellectual Property’.

Here are the breakdown points of what is allowed and what isn’t as per Facebook Community Standards.

Safety

In this section of Facebook Community Guidelines, it is mentioned that if there is any genuine risk of direct threats or physical harm to public safety, Facebook will remove contents, disable the accounts and work with law enforcement to safeguard the integrity of the platform. This also includes self-injury and suicide posts.

Furthermore, Facebook community standards also prohibits:

• Sexual exploitation and child nudity of minors.
• Images and pictures of sexual violence.
• Purposefully aiming or bullying individuals with the intention of shaming them.
• Harassment.
• Private information that could trigger financial or physical harm.

Note: Facebook Community Standards’ bullying policies are not applied to public figures as they want to allow disclosure of people who have a large public audience. Facebook will, however, remove posts about public figures if it contains hate speech or threat.

Also read this: Know Why Facebook Removed Trending Feature From Its Website

Integrity and Authenticity

In this section, Facebook mentions the kind of posts and content that falls outside of its other classifications and categories. This contains:

• Spam in the form of false and delusive information to gain more shares, followers, and likes.
• Misrepresentation- You need to be a verifiable, accurate and real identity on Facebook.
• ‘False News’- Facebook tries to bring down false news but that scorn is permitted. For these particular reasons, Facebook does not remove or eliminate the concept of false news but instead, significantly lowers its promotion by displaying it lesser in the news feed.

Additionally, Facebook also encompasses “memorialization” in this subdivision. This means that you can commemorate or memorialize an account of a deceased person.

Violence and Criminal Behaviour

Facebook forbids all calls and threats to violence and states that its team works to determine the dissimilarity between ‘content that poses a potential threat to personal and public safety’ and ‘casual statements’.

As per Facebook Community Standards, they block:

• Organized hate and disrespect
• Terrorist Activity
• Human Trafficking
• Serial or mass murder
• Criminal activities or organized violence
• Regulated goods

However, the company’s policies ban individual trade and sales of drugs, non-med drugs, ammunition, firearms and more. Although, it permits discussion of topics like firearms etc. Other banned subjects comprise of anyone who is promoting crime or harm to others.

Objectionable Content

Objectionable Content inculcates some of the subjects in other divisions and more. Here is the list of what is banned.

• Hate Speech
• Graphic violence that promotes humiliation or suffering of others. Although, it does permit graphic violence in posts that raise awareness about grave situations. However, in those cases, Facebook puts a disclaimer and requires the user to be above 18 years of age.
• Sexual activities and adult nudity (the exception is when it is about raising awareness for medical or educational reasons). Images of art or paintings that portray nudity are allowed.
• Content and posts that are marked ‘cruel and insensitive’ including ‘posts that aims serious emotional or physical harm’.

Content Related Requests

The Facebook Community Standards and guidelines here state whatever it can do to assist various users.

It will be gratified if someone requests to remove their account or the account of a deceased individual or even the account of an incapacitated user; as long as the request is from an authorized user.

Additionally, Facebook also states that it protects the minor from accessing the social platform. It will oblige appeals for:

• Deletion of underage accounts (minimum age to use Facebook should be at least 13 years)
• Government requests for deleting images depicting child abuse or beating/harassing by an adult to death.
• Legal guardian pleas for removal of unintentionally famous minor accounts from possible attacks.

Also read this: Ways To Generate Facebook Leads Without Running Ads

Respecting Intellectual Property

According to Facebook Community Standards, it does not permit anyone to post or share content that is originally owned by someone else. This includes anything with issues like ‘trademark, copyright or any other legal rights’.

It also outlines that you are the sole proprietor of anything that you post. This means that in case if you share any picture that you captured, for example, you still fully own it and therefore Facebook never claims right to it.

You can further learn more about the Facebook Community Standards by visiting their newsroom page. And in case if you want to know more about creating social media strategies that align with the Facebook guidelines, contact us. We will be there to assist you.

Originally published at www.oodlesmarketing.com on August 2, 2018.