Facebook Guidelines for Moderators Leaked!

A recent investigation has revealed Facebook guidelines that moderators must follow in an attempt to police the ever-growing issue of content moderation. Some of the rules are frankly just bizarre.

What are these Facebook guidelines?

The Facebook guidelines come across like a scene from Harry Potter. Whenever a new social outrage occurs, Mark Zuckerberg (or his legal team) send out Filch to nail another rule to the already mass filled wall.

While some seem perfectly reasonable, the investigation conducted by the Guardian has revealed some which are frankly just bizarre.

The Facebook Guidelines can allow for the following.

• Videos of violent deaths.
• Photos of physical abuse of bullying.
• Photos of animal abuse (as long as the content is not “disturbing”).
• Videos of abortions are ok (as long as there is no nudity).
• Telling someone “I hope someone kills you”

All the above, with a few exceptions, are perfectly ok.

While some might agree that some of these within a particular context are acceptable, it does highlight the massively contrived line Facebook and the media have to walk to provide content without outraging some group.

So threatening to shoot Trump is bad, but beating up red heads or fat people is ok?

Politics is the line you can’t cross for these Facebook guidelines. At least that is my understanding from reading between the lines. While hateful religious speech is obviously a bad thing to do, the Facebook guidelines apparently draw a line at outright assassination threats or suggestions.

In fairness to the Facebook moderators, they are doing their best to cope with what is obviously a mixed bag of messages. Given the recent ‘Facebook Murder Case’ in which a man live streamed the before and after, Facebook is under increasing pressure to fairly moderate their content.

Facebook guidelines are an apparent minefield. Moderators are clearly getting more fearful of walking through them for fear of blowing themselves up. There have been regular reports of Facebook moderators removing nudity on the site and amazingly even when it has been in a genuine artistic setting. It was reported that Facebook decided to remove nude paintings of Charles Blackman, deeming them ‘inappropriate’.

What Facebook moderators seem to be screaming out for a clear set of do’s and don’t. This Facebook guideline they have to work from appears to be a hateful mess of contradictions and options.

What I am glad to say is that we at eTeknix do not suffer from such censorship. We shall demonstrate this by the graphic image of full frontal nudity below.