Facebook just like any other social network has a set of guidelines which it expects its users to follow when sharing content on its site. These rules are set so as to minimize friction between the various cultures that are represented in large scale communities like this and that is why you won’t see “sensitive” photos or videos appearing often on your timeline for example.
Facebook’s Community Standards abide under 4 principles: Keeping you safe, encouraging respectful behaviour, acknowledging cultural diversity and empowering you with tools to control what you see on Facebook. However, it seems like Facebook is relaxing such rules as described by Facebook’s VP of Global Public Policy and VP of Global Operations & Media Partnerships. “In the weeks ahead, we’re going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest- even if they might otherwise violate our standards,” they said in the blogpost.
Implementing this will be difficult obviously and Facebook said that they will “work with our community and partners to explore exactly how to do this, both through new tools and approaches to enforcement.” Some of these partners include photographers, journalists, publishers, experts or even law enforcement officials and safety advocates. This is because some of the “newsworthy” posts that could be offensive in one culture could not be offensive in another and all of that needs to be ironed out.
Facebook needs to implement this right so t.hat we can have a more accurate view of what is happening around the world with minimal censoring. However they need to be careful to prevent cases where they have been found out to be trending fake news.
