Have you ever experienced having one or some of your Facebook posts removed or deleted, and you don’t know why? All you were given was that your post violated its Community Standards.
You may have initially thought that your account was reported or, worse, hacked. Some people took the necessary measures to reinforce their system, especially corporations that can afford to pay for penetration testing, only to find out that it had nothing to do with any hacking.
Guess what? You’re not alone.
Ever since Facebook released its Community Standards in 2018 and started implementing them, people’s newsfeeds have somehow become curated with the filtered content.
They are doing their best to keep the platform as pleasant and enjoyable as possible. The initial intent of Facebook is really to connect people online. It has since gone on from connecting Harvard students to connecting the entire world.
But as pleasant and useful as it has been, some people took advantage of this platform to suit their own needs. While there’s nothing wrong with it, some posts are outlandish and outrageous that people, especially conservatives, were clamouring for some censorship to make the platform safer for everyone to use.
Community Standards
Facebook’s Community Standards can be broken down into six categories. They are quite particular about posts that promote, highlight, or glorify the following:
Criminal Behaviour and Violence
Any calls to violence, any threats that are posted on Facebook will definitely be removed. Sometimes a simple sales post on Marketplace about action figures with weapons and firearms is taken out, no matter how harmless it may seem.
They have a strict policy against violence, crime, and terrorism that they work very hard to protect day and night
Threats of Physical Harm and Public Safety
Facebook is clear in the safety section of the guidelines that they will work with the authorities when they see real threats to public safety and risks to physical harm on individuals, including suicide and self-harm.
They can identify which posts and comments are casual and which ones have a deeper context.
Objectionable Posts
Other posts may not pose a great risk to one’s health and safety but may cross some lines, especially regarding beliefs and convictions. Posts containing hateful speech, nudity, graphic violence, illegal drug use, racial slurs, and other similar content will be removed.
Fake News, Misleading Information, and Misrepresentation
Facebook is also very particular about the spread of false information and misrepresentation. For this reason, they have started to employ fact checkers whose sole job is to check the authenticity and legitimacy of the information provided in certain posts.
Intellectual Property
People love entertainment. That’s one reason they turn to Facebook because it allows them to view and create entertaining content. But people also found that their posts seem to get flagged because they don’t own the media detected in their posts. This typically happens when Facebook detects music in the post. They are aggressive about protecting artists and creators and respecting their intellectual property.
Content-related Requests
Lastly, Facebook will oblige any requests for removal of posts, images, or accounts (like in the case of death or incapacity) as long as the one making the request is an authorised representative.
To find out more about Facebook’s Community Standards, go to this page and take time to go over everything written in it.
Be sure to steer clear of the above-mentioned topics if you don’t want your posts to go missing.
