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Facebook’s parent company says it will give more explanations for minor offenses and wait to suspend users for 30 days until they have seven or more offenses.
The number of people in Facebook jail is about to go down. Under a new set of rules that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, announced on Thursday, it will be harder for users to get their accounts shut down for breaking less important rules. Civil society groups and Meta’s “semi-independent” Oversight Board have been complaining for years about the company’s “strike” policies, which can cause content that isn’t actually harmful to be flagged as harmful. These changes are a response to those complaints. Still, more serious, harmful content keeps getting through the cracks in moderation.
Most of the talk about Meta’s content moderation these days is about how the platforms handle unhinged politicians and very controversial political arguments. This makes it easy to forget that a much larger number of regular users end up in Facebook Jail, whether they did something right or wrong.
Changes to Facebook’s prison
In the future, Facebook’s punishment system will focus more on giving users more information about why a piece of content breaks its rules instead of just restricting or suspending it right away. One of the worst punishments, not being able to post for 30 days, will now only happen after the seventh post that breaks the rules. Meta says that the general idea is to try to keep account restrictions for “persistent violators” who keep breaking the rules even after being told many times not to. In theory, that should let users learn from their mistakes and stop other people from getting locked out of their mistakes because they didn’t understand.
Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Vice President of Content Policy, said, “Under the new system, we will focus on helping people understand why we removed their content. This has been shown to be more effective at keeping people from doing it again than quickly taking away their ability to post.”
This softer side to Facebook’s legal power only applies to cases that are not as serious. Meta says that it will still take immediate action against users’ accounts if they post images of child exploitation, information about terrorists, or other more serious information. This can include getting rid of accounts that are especially bad from the platform.
Bickert added, “We’re making this change in part because we know we don’t always get it right.” “So instead of possibly over-punishing people with a lower number of strikes for low-severity violations and limiting their ability to express themselves, this new approach will lead to faster and more effective actions for those who keep breaking our rules.”
What does Facebook jail mean?
If you’ve spent much time on Facebook, you’ve probably seen examples of people who say their account was blocked or suspended for what seems like no good reason. Here you are in Facebook Jail.
There are plenty of times when Facebook users who say they didn’t break the rules didn’t even know they did. Meta’s moderation system is mostly automated, but there are times when it gets things wrong and flags users for wrong or silly reasons. Some users think that Facebook rules its platform with an iron fist because it is so strict about following the rules. It’s also one reason why a lot of Republican lawmakers still think Mark Zuckerberg wants to shut down conservative voices. He isn’t.
“A meme is what it is.”
The Facebook Papers, a set of internal documents shared with auto news360 by Facebook employee Frances Haugen, shows how users are confused and angry about how Facebook enforces its rules. The documents show examples of younger users who were upset when they were flagged for posting satire on morbid meme pages and getting in trouble for it.
A 17-year-old from the U.K. wrote, “This is what this page is for.” “This group is for memes like the one I posted, even though it broke the rules. It wasn’t bad at all.” Another 16-year-old from Pakistan wrote, “A meme is a meme.”
In other cases, an adult user from Germany complains that one of his posts was taken down without being told why. Some users even apologized to Facebook, saying they didn’t know they were breaking the company’s rules.
Meta is trying to find a good middle ground with her new, less strict plan. The company says that its own research shows that 80% of users who have broken rules a few times won’t do it again in the next 60 days. That means that warnings or other light signals to low-level offenders work pretty well at stopping them from doing it again. Then, account restrictions are put on the other 20% of purposeful jerks. People are worried that the change in policy could give harmful users more freedom at a time when fake news, bullying, and general negativity are still common on social media. Meta doesn’t think that will happen.
“With this update, we’ll still be able to keep our app safe and let people express themselves,” Bickert said.
“There is still room for improvement.”
Even though the Oversight Board’s feedback led to some of Facebook’s changes, the Supreme Court-like group wasn’t always positive. Even though the board liked that Facebook was trying to be more open, it also said that the company was only focusing on “less serious violations.” The board said that the new rules didn’t do much to answer transparency questions about “severe strikes,” which they say can have a big effect on journalists or activists whose accounts are shut down for unclear reasons.
The Oversight Board said, “Today’s announcement focuses on violations that were not as bad.” “Yet, the Board has repeatedly found that Meta makes mistakes when it comes to finding and punishing more serious violations.”
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