Facebook wants to keep its groups safe

announced Facebook announced some new penalties for group members who repeatedly violate its rules, as well as new control options for group administrators to monitor potentially harmful content in their groups.

Regarding the new restrictions, the company is implementing new access penalties for group members whose posts previously violated its rules anywhere across the platform, limiting their ability to spread misinformation or hate speech across the board.

“To continue limiting access to people who break our rules, we’re starting to downgrade all group content from members who violate our Community Standards anywhere on Facebook,” the company said. And these cuts get sharper as the violations increase.

This step is important, because private collections remain problematic since they are free from public scrutiny.

This means that people can share potentially harmful content among group members who are more open to it, and therefore see fewer penalties as a result.

This change limits their ability to post the same content outside of their groups by imposing blanket penalties across all actions.

The company is also adding a new moderation element called “Reported by Facebook”, which enables group admins to view content that has been flagged for removal before it is shown across the broader community.

The company said: Administrators can then either review and remove the content themselves, or request a review by Facebook. and provide additional feedback on why they believe that part of the content should remain across the platform. This is to get the administrators involved before the platform steps in and issues an alert that could affect the group itself.

The new element also serves as a learning tool of sorts to help admins understand what types of posts the platform won’t allow. This may further improve group interaction and reduce offending content.

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Facebook adds new penalties to group members

The platform has paid increasing attention to groups since the 2020 US presidential election, as they have been used to spread false information about voting.

It also faces increased scrutiny over extremism and other harmful content across the platform thanks to documents leaked by former company employee Frances Hoggin, who recently testified before Congress.

Earlier this week, the company indicated that it also expects a large number of new stories. This is based on thousands of pages of leaked documents.

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