Facebook has announced changes
to how it handles and communicates violations of its policies around
the publishing of fake news and misinformation, with the goal of
preventing publishers that operate large networks of pages and groups
from skirting bans. Starting today, Facebook says it will reserve the
right to take down existing pages and groups that are simply affiliated
with those that have violated the company’s community standards, even if
those pages or groups haven’t technically broken any rules.
Facebook says this is specifically to prevent users from
using an adjacent or other existing page or group as a replacement once
another has been flagged and taken down. Prior to this change, the page
or group must have been made after the initial removal to be
potentially affected simply for affiliation reasons. Now, Facebook says
it can use this policy to pull down an affiliated page or group even if
it was made before the takedown.
While it appears the change is focused on preventing
people from continuing to peddle fake or purposefully inflammatory
content, it also applies to violations of Facebook’s rules on spam and
clickbait, copyright-infringing material, hate speech, graphic violence,
harassment and bullying, and nudity. Not all inaccurate or inflammatory
content counts as a violation, but the company now points to its extensive community standards page to help clarify how it makes these distinctions.
Here’s the policy change in full:
We’ve long prohibited people from creating new Pages, groups, events, or accounts that look similar to those we’ve previously removed for violating our Community Standards. However, we’ve seen people working to get around our enforcement by using existing Pages that they already manage for the same purpose as the Page we removed for violating our standards.To address this gap, when we remove a Page or group for violating our policies, we may now also remove other Pages and Groups even if that specific Page or Group has not met the threshold to be unpublished on its own. To enforce this updated policy, we’ll look at a broad set of information, including whether the Page has the same people administering it, or has a similar name, to one we’re removing.
In a seemingly good-faith effort to keep page owners
better informed about whether they’re continuously posting content that
violates the rules, Facebook says it’s updated the administrative portal
of its site to include a new “Page Quality” tab.
There, page owners can get a breakdown of posts and other
shared material that has violated the community standards, as well as
posts judged to be false or misleading by the company’s network of
third-party fact-checkers. Facebook says it won’t be including
breakdowns of content that is taken down for reasons related to “spam,
clickbait, or IP violations,” although it’s a bit unclear why those
categories would be exempt from the new, more transparent enforcement
communication.
The move is yet another attempt from Facebook to
proactively police its users and take a more direct role in ensuring its
platform isn’t overrun with fake news and propaganda, as well as
content designed to stir tensions and direct hate at specific groups.
Over the last few years, the social media company has become a central
player in information warfare, election interference, and even genocide,
as foreign governments and other malicious third parties have found the website to be a particularly effective and lucrative tool in these efforts.
While this change to page enforcement is just one small step, it’s a
recognition from the company that one of its few options for recourse is
to become more stringent and keep a closer eye on the behavior of its
users.