Facebook intends to stop censoring newsworthy content by updating its community guidelines

Facebook is much more than a social media platform. For many of its 1.6 billion active users Facebook is a source of news, information, community, entertainment and more. Catering to such a wide audience necessitates a more moderate approach to content. Visually disturbing content, nudity, graphic violence, etc. are not to everyone’s taste. Facebook claims to appreciate this fact and so far, its community guidelines have strictly enforced such policies. However, in a recent blog post, Joel Kaplan and Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s VP of Global Public Policy and VP of Global Operations and Media Partnerships respectively, explained that these same guidelines only serve to censor news. This is something that Facebook has decided is unacceptable. Any form of censorship is bad and Facebook has been in the news for censoring historically significant or newsworthy content, if for no other reason than compliance with its community guidelines. In the blog, the VPs state, “Observing global standards for our community is complex. Whether an image is newsworthy or historically significant is highly subjective. Images of nudity or violence that are acceptable in one part of the world may be offensive — or even illegal — in another.” To remedy this, they intend to initiate a whole slew of changes to the community guidelines which will allow newsworthy stories and images to stand even if they violate existing standards. Kaplan and Osofsky also add that their goal is to “channel our community’s values” and the “reflect our community’s interests.” But they need help to do this. To that end, the company intends to work with publishers, journalists, photographers and the like to figure out a way to better determine the right course of action in this regard.