Facebook: Here's What You Can and Can't Do
Social network clarifies what posts it will take down from the site.
— -- Facebook's rules aren't changing -- but they want to make sure their 1.39 billion users better understand what they can and can not post on the social network.
Explaining what constitutes nudity and hate speech to a global audience is harder than one would expect.
"It's a challenge to maintain one set of standards that meets the needs of a diverse global community," Monika Bickert, head of global policy at Facebook and Chris Sonderby, the company's deputy general counsel, wrote in a blog post.
"For one thing, people from different backgrounds may have different ideas about what’s appropriate to share — a video posted as a joke by one person might be upsetting to someone else, but it may not violate our standards," they wrote.
In case there was any doubt: Nudity is not allowed on Facebook, however there are some exceptions, including women who are "actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring."
Under most circumstances, Facebook will remove hate speech, however the company noted the important role it can play in being a forum to "challenge ideas, institutions, and practices."
"Sometimes people share content containing someone else's hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others about that hate speech," the updated standards said. "When this is the case, we expect people to clearly indicate their purpose, which helps us better understand why they shared that content."
When it comes to violence, Facebook will remove "graphic images when they are shared for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate or glorify violence," the company said.
Facebook also revealed that the number of government requests for data and content restrictions it fielded over the second half of 2014 increased -- with more requests coming from Turkey and Russia to block content.
While requests for account data remained flat, Facebook reported there was a decline in requests from the United States and Germany.
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