Facebook Expands Policies To Protect Public Figures From Harassment

As Facebook continues to deal with a barrage of criticism over a series of leaked internal documents, the company has stepped up to create stronger anti-harassment policies for some of its users. This week, the social media giant announced that it will ban content that “degrades or sexualizes” public figures.

The new policy, which will protect users such as politicians, celebrities, activists, and journalists, will remove “severe sexualizing content” that is being used to target or harass.

“Because what is ‘unwanted’ can be subjective, we’ll rely on additional context from the individual experiencing the abuse to take action,” Facebook said in a statement. “We made these changes because attacks like these can weaponize a public figure’s appearance, which is unnecessary and often not related to the work these public figures represent.”

Additionally, Facebook also promised to crack down on coordinated mass harassment campaigns, which it says are often orchestrated by bad foreign actors.

Of course, it would be nice if these protections were rolled out to everyday users and not just the platform’s elite. However, this is a step in the right direction, and it’s the kind of policy that could potentially expand to protect more people in the future.




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