NEW YORK: Facebook is taking steps to help users better understand how it handles nudity, terrorist groups and other controversial behaviour on the world’s largest social network.
The site spelled out its policies on its “community standards” page, detailing the sort of content users can and can’t post on the site.
Facebook has taken flak in the past for apparent inconsistencies, such as removing a picture of a mother breastfeeding her newborn while allowing terrorist videos of beheadings to pop up in newsfeeds.
“People rightfully want to know what content we will take down, what controversial content we’ll leave up, and why,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post late Sunday.
The updated, newly organized page provides specific examples of banned content such as direct threats, hate speech and criminal activity.
A new section on “Dangerous Organizations” makes it clear that Facebook doesn’t allow “terrorist activity” or “organized criminal activity” to have a place on its site.
The social network, which counts 1.3 billion users around the globe, said some nudity is allowed for artistic purposes, but not images aimed at sexual exploitation or pornography.
“We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks,” the policy reads.
“We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring.”
Facebook also bans images “shared in revenge or without permission,” so-called revenge porn.
The social network said none of the policies is actually new and that the changes are cosmetic.
“We’re not changing anything about the policies,” said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management. “We’re just trying to explain what we do more clearly.”
