Facebook disabled more than 14,000 accounts in one month for revenge porn and sexual extortion

In January, Facebook disabled more than 14,000 accounts for revenge porn and sexual extortion, and 33 of those incidents involved children, according to a report from The Guardian. The outlet also reported that Facebook moderators escalated tens of thousands of potential cases that month.

Rules allow “moderate displays of sexuality”

Other documents on moderation rules obtained by the outlet reportedly make clear that, as long as the content is between adults, Facebook allows content showing “moderate displays of sexuality, open-mouthed kissing, clothed simulated sex and pixelated sexual activity.” The company also makes allowances for sexual jokes.

The documents, according to The Guardian, offer some examples of approved explicit content, such as “I’m gonna eat that pussy,” or “Hello ladies, wanna suck my cock?” One example cited — “I’m gonna fuck you” — would be approved unless more detail on the act is also included.

Facebook seems to walk a fine line in other sexual content rules seen by The Guardian. The company allows some forms of nude art, for example, but a document says digitally generated sexual images are not allowed.

The Guardian obtained a trove of documents that outline Facebook’s strategies for removing content. Over the weekend, it began publishing stories from those documents. Today, it also reported on documents suggesting footage of children being bullied was permitted.

Facebook has faced major criticism over how it deals with content moderation. Apart from recent incidents involving violent videos, the company was widely chastised last year for removing a historic photo of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing from napalm.

Facebook Messenger Home Screen Gets a Makeover

Messenger Day posts are now located below three new tabs at the top of the home screen: Messages, Active, and Groups. The bottom bar is also getting a refresh. It now has tabs for Home, Calls, the in-app Camera, and People and Games.

Once Facebook rolled out its Snapchat Stories clone inside Messenger, the app started to feel a little busy and disorganized. So, Facebook is giving Messenger a revamp.
 
The social network is reorganizing the Messenger home screen in an effort to make it "your central hub for connecting with the people and businesses you want to in whatever way you prefer." Messenger Day posts still feature prominently, but are now located below three new tabs at the top of the home screen: Messages, Active, and Groups.
"By tapping or swiping to these tabs, you can quickly navigate to where you need to go and get messaging faster," Facebook wrote in a post on the Messenger page.
The bottom bar is also getting a refresh. It now has tabs for Home, Calls, the in-app Camera, and People and Games. When there's something new to check out in one of these tabs, Facebook will put a red dot there to let you know. When you receive a new message, for instance, you'll see a red dot next to the Home button. If you missed a call, you'll see a red dot next to Calls.
"These small changes are designed to make Messenger simpler for you – to help you get to your contacts quickly, jump into your conversations where you left off, start new chats, and stay up to date," Facebook wrote.
Facebook said it plans to roll out these changes worldwide on iOS and Android this week.

 

Facebook’s Fact Checking Can Make Fake News Spread Even Faster

After acknowledging that it has a problem with fake news, Facebook introduced a feature recently that flags certain posts as "disputed." In some cases, however, this appears to be having the opposite effect to the one Facebook intended.

According to a report by The Guardian, the tagging of fake news is not consistent, and some stories that have been flagged continue to circulate without a warning. In other cases, traffic to fake news posts actually increased after Facebook applied the warning.

Facebook started rolling out the new feature last month, as part of a partnership with a group of external fact-checking sites, including Snopes.com, ABC News, and Politifact.

When a user tries to share links that have been marked as questionable, an alert pops up that says the story in question has been disputed. The alert links to more information about the fact-checking feature and says that "sometimes people share fake news without knowing it."If the user continues to share the link or story anyway, the link is supposed to appear in the news-feeds of other users with a large note that says "disputed," and lists the organizations that flagged it as fake or questionable.
The idea behind the effort was to try to decrease the visibility of hoaxes and fake news, which many Facebook critics believe are spread rapidly by the site's news-feed algorithm.