Facebook Unveils New Penalties on Facebook Groups in Wake of Capitol Riot--3rd Update
17 Mars 2021 - 5:07PM
Dow Jones News
By Jeff Horwitz
Facebook Inc. introduced new penalties for interest-based forums
called Groups that are flagged for violating its community
standards, as it aims to curb a product that played a high-profile
role in the protests that led up to the Capitol riot.
"Groups and members that violate our rules should have reduced
privileges and reach," Facebook Vice President of Engineering Tom
Alison said in a blog post Wednesday. The changes come after
Facebook's own researchers found that the company's oversight of
the product was weak.
Groups forums are often private, but can attract millions of
users. Facebook has heavily promoted them to users, and more than
half of the platform's 2.8 billion monthly active users belong to
at least five.
The company will also stop recommending political and
health-related groups to countries outside of the U.S. It currently
only restricts such recommendations to U.S. users.
The penalties formalize some of the restrictions placed on the
product in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.
"We're trying to look at instances where administrators are
trying to create unhealthy groups," Mr. Alison said.
The changes come after internal Facebook research found that
Facebook Groups had been widely used to promote election-related
conspiracies such as the "Stop the Steal" effort that preceded the
Capitol riot.
Other social networks have been cracking down on misinformation
on their platform. Twitter Inc. has introduced a strike system that
penalizes users who post misleading information on such topics like
the Covid-19 vaccine and election integrity.
Facebook recently concluded that some of its largest civic-based
Groups were toxic and was alarmed by its growth, according to
Internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Write to Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 17, 2021 11:52 ET (15:52 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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