Our Commitment to Safety

We released our ninth Community Standards Enforcement Report. Read the full post.

We released our Intellectual Property Transparency Report covering the second half of 2020. For the first time, we’re sharing how much content we removed proactively for potential counterfeit or copyright infringement, before it was reported to us by a rights holder. Read the full post.

We provide more details about our efforts to fight unauthorized scraping, and offer a deeper dive into the topic of “phone number enumeration” — a scraping technique that was at the center of recent reports about scraping on our platform. Read the full post.

Facebook Responds to the Recommendations from the Oversight Board in a Case about Zwarte Piet. Read the full post.

Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive campaigns around the world — whether they are foreign or domestic. In April, we removed nine networks from six countries. The vast majority of them targeted people in their own countries. We have shared information about our findings with industry partners, researchers, law enforcement and policymakers. Read the full post.

Although our work here is never finished, the document below shares a comprehensive look at what we have done to limit hate and harmful content on our platforms and make Facebook safer. Read the full post.

An Update on our approach to private messaging. Read the full post.

We published a white paper on how we’re protecting privacy in our COVID-19 initiatives. This paper covers our decisions regarding data and how we sought to address the urgent needs of public health authorities and researchers while maintaining our commitment to privacy and other fundamental rights. Read the full post.

We’re expanding on our work to use direct feedback from people who use Facebook to understand the content people find most valuable. Read the full post.

We shared actions we took against two separate groups of hackers in Palestine — a network linked to the Preventive Security Service (PSS) and a threat actor known as Arid Viper — removing their ability to use their infrastructure to abuse our platform, distribute malware and hack people’s accounts across the internet. Read the full post.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) launched its first report tracking performance on brand safety across seven platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, as the next step in its mission to improve the safety, trustworthiness, and sustainability of media. Read the full post.

We shared the continued progress we’ve made by publishing a new Privacy Progress Update that provides our most detailed look to date at the work we’re doing to embed privacy into all facets of our company and the investments we’re making to keep improving our privacy technology and practices. Read the full post.

As the trial came to a close, we shared an update on how we’re helping people safely connect and share what they are experiencing. Read the full post.

We filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania against New Ventures Services Corp. (NVSC), a company that has repeatedly engaged in cybersquatting activities. NVSC registered hundreds of lookalike domain names that could be used to deceive people by impersonating Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Read the full post.

People who use Facebook and Instagram now have the ability to appeal other people’s content that has been left up to the Oversight Board. Read the full post.

We shared more about what scraping is, how it works and what we’re doing to prevent scraping to protect people’s information. Read the full post.

Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive campaigns around the world — whether they are foreign or domestic. In March, we removed 14 networks from 11 countries. Five networks — from Albania, Iran, Spain, Argentina, and Egypt — targeted primarily people outside of their countries. Nine others — from Israel, Benin, Comoros, Georgia, and Mexico — focused on domestic audiences in their respective countries. Read the full post.

In the third episode of our Privacy Conversations series, Facebook’s Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer for Public Policy, Erin Egan, sits down with Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF). Read the full post.

We announced a new tool to give users more control over their News Feed. Read the full post.

We shared an update on the Responsible AI team’s latest efforts with Fairness Flow. Read the full post.

An op-ed from Nick Clegg on algorithms and polarization. Read the full post.

We shared further information on the measures that we are implementing to support and protect these important elections. Read the full post.

We announced the completion of the first phase of our latest fiber network build across Indiana. Read the full post.

We shared actions we took against a group of hackers in China known in the security industry as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye — to disrupt their ability to use their infrastructure to abuse our platform, distribute malware and hack people’s accounts across the internet. Read the full post.

As part of our ongoing work to maintain a high-quality ecosystem of content for people and to provide advertisers with relevant tools to suit their business needs, today, we’re expanding our brand safety controls and making updates to our Commerce & Ads IP Tool. Read the full post.

Read the full post from Guy Rosen.

We announced people can set up two-factor authentication and log into Facebook on iOS and Android mobile devices using a security key — available to anyone in the world. Read the full post.

We shared the latest in our ongoing work to keep Groups safe, which includes our thinking on how to keep recommendations safe as well as reducing privileges for those who break our rules. These changes will roll out globally over the coming months. Read the full post.

We launched a corporate human rights policy, covering all of Facebook Inc, and a fund to support human rights defenders. Read the full post.

We shared updates on new features and resources as part of our ongoing efforts to keep our youngest community members safe. Read the full post.

Facebook already connected over 2 billion people to authoritative COVID-19 information, and as access to COVID-19 vaccines expands, we’re aiming to help bring 50 million people one step closer to getting vaccinated. Read the full post.

We responded to the recommendations from the Oversight Board in a case about a veiled threat based on religious beliefs. Read the full post.

We want to explain in more detail the commitments we make to our EU users to keep their information safe and secure when it is transferred to the US, and the policies we have in place to evaluate and respond to government requests. Read the full post.

We filed motions to dismiss the antitrust lawsuits brought by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Read the full post.

We announced that private and secure one-to-one voice and video calls are now available on WhatsApp’s desktop app. Read the full post.

Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive campaigns around the world — whether they are foreign or domestic. In February, we removed five networks from Thailand, Iran, Morocco and Russia. Two Iranian networks primarily targeted people outside of Iran, and three others — from Thailand, Morocco and Russia — focused on domestic audiences in their respective countries. Read the full post.

For each recommendation, we have provided detailed responses and will continue to update as we make progress on our commitments. Read the full post.

We released our eighth Community Standards Enforcement Report. Read the full post.

In the final three months of 2020, we did better than ever before to proactively detect hate speech and bullying and harassment content. 97 percent of hate speech taken down from Facebook was spotted by our automated systems before any human flagged it, up from 94 percent in the previous quarter and 80.5 percent in late 2019. Read the full post.

Facebook will soon begin building and testing new advertiser topic exclusion controls with a small group of advertisers. These controls will help to address concerns advertisers have of their ads appearing in News Feed next to certain topics based on their brand suitability preferences. Read the full post.

Facebook is connecting people with authoritative information about the Holocaust. Anyone who searches on Facebook for terms associated with either the Holocaust or Holocaust denial will see a message from Facebook encouraging them to connect with credible information about the Holocaust off Facebook. Read the full post.

Facebook referred its decision to indefinitely suspend former US President Donald Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts to the independent Oversight Board. Read the full post.

Our teams continue to focus on finding and removing deceptive campaigns around the world — both foreign and domestic. In December, we removed 17 networks of accounts, Pages and Groups, the most we’ve removed in any one month. We took down deceptive campaigns from nearly every continent and shared information about our findings with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners. Read the full post.

We updated Access Your Information to make it usable and transparent so that your Facebook information is useful, easy to understand and easy to find. Read the full post.

Facebook announced that Roy L. Austin, Jr., a nationally renowned civil rights attorney and advocate, will join Facebook to establish the company’s new civil rights organization. Read the full post.

We continued to keep emergency measures in place and implemented several new one. We also extended the block on President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram. Read the full post.

We released our seventh Community Standards Enforcement Report where we announced a new metric on global hate speech prevalence. Read the full post.

We expanded on how we evaluate the effectiveness of our enforcement by trying to keep the prevalence of hate speech on our platform as low as possible, while minimizing mistakes in the content that we remove. Read the full post.

We shared an update on recent enforcement action taken against CIB networks in the US and Myanmar. Read the full post.

We shared an update on progress we’ve made on Privacy 180 days since the FTC order. Read the full post.

We announced efforts in advance of continued elections in Africa including the expansion of fact-checking to cover 18 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. Read the full post.

The Oversight Board announced it will begin hearing cases related to some of the most significant and difficult content decisions on Facebook and Instagram. Read more.

We announced that we’ll remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QANON. Read the full post.

We announced new steps as part of our continued work to help support vaccine efforts including a new policy to reject ads globally that discourage people from getting a vaccine. Read the full post.

We updated our hate speech policy to prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust. Read the full post.

We announced an update on the enforcement actions since the September CIB report, and a set of enforcement actions taken in the first couple days of October. Read the full post.

We announced steps Facebook has taken to protect the integrity of the 2020 elections, and the progress made since 2016. Read the full post.

Facebook filed separate lawsuits in federal court against four individuals providing services intended to artificially inflate likes and followers of Instagram accounts, a practice known as fake engagement. Read the full post.

Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) agrees commitments and timeframe for the first global brand safety and sustainability framework for the advertising industry. Read the full post.

We shared an update on our ongoing work to keep groups safe. Read the full post.

We shared updates on our work with the industry, including the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), a global program in digital advertising, announcing Facebook as one of the inaugural TAG Brand Safety Certified companies. We also expanded brand safety controls for advertisers. Read the full post.

We announced updates to our policies, products and partnerships with experts to create additional pathways for people to get the help they need. Read the full post.

We provided an update on our work to make Instagram more equitable. Read the full post.

Mark Zuckerberg announced additional steps we're taking to further the work we're already doing to help secure the integrity of the US elections by encouraging voting, connecting people to authoritative information and reducing the risks of post-election confusion. Read the full post.

For August, we removed three networks of accounts, Pages and Groups. Two of them — from Russia and the US — targeted people outside of their country, and another from Pakistan focused on domestic audiences in Pakistan and India. We shared information about our findings with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners. Read the full post.

We shared updates on the work that we’ve done and will continue to do to help ensure the integrity of Myanmar’s election on our platform. This included improving our ability to detect and remove hate speech and content that incites violence, our ongoing work to reduce the spread of harmful misinformation, the removal of inauthentic networks in Myanmar that seek to manipulate public opinion and our engagement with key stakeholders in Myanmar to ensure that Facebook is responsive to local needs. Read the full post.

We introduced a new research initiative for the 2020 elections. Read the full post.

We made Recommendation Guidelines public in the Help Center to help people better understand the kinds of non-community standards violating content, groups, and pages we aim to remove from various recommendations surfaces. Since our stance is that the unconnected content that we deliver in these areas should be of a higher caliber, we provided context on why certain pages, groups, content aren’t eligible to be included in recommendations, and therefore may not be distributed as widely. Read the full post.

We announced our intention to bring Facebook News to more countries in the coming months and confirmed we’ll pay for news as we roll out these new products. Read the full post.

We submitted official comments to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ahead of its September 22 public workshop “to examine the potential benefits and challenges to consumers and competition raised by data portability.” Read the full post.

We announced that we scaled back the temporary ban to allow people to promote and trade hand sanitizer, and surface disinfecting wipes on our apps. Read the full post.

We expanded our dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy to address organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety, but don’t meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization and banned from having any presence on our platform. Read the full post.

We launched an Educator Hub to support teachers and provide resources across our apps to help people stay connected and take care of each other. Read the full post.

We launched our Voter Information Center on Facebook and Instagram, which will serve as a one-stop shop to give people in the US the tools and information they need to make their voices heard at the ballot box. Read the full post.

We launched a notification screen to inform people about links from reliable sources related to COVID-19 and provide them with access to our COVID-19 Info Center. Read the full post.

We released our sixth Community Standards Enforcement Report — the first in our quarterly cadence. Read the full post.

We explained how the role of technology has changed in content moderation, as it continues to improve and play a larger role across proactive detection, automation and prioritization. Together, these three aspects of technology have transformed our content review process and greatly improved our ability to moderate content at scale. However, there are still areas where it’s critical for people to review. That’s why our content review system needs both people and technology to be successful. Read the full post.

We are issuing an RFP to external auditors to conduct an independent audit of the metrics in our Community Standards Enforcement Report to validate that they are measured and reported correctly. Read the full post.

We enhanced our product and tools to meet the requirements of LGPD and how it will impact people. Read the full post.

We published our third civil rights audit report — bringing to a close an independent two-year review of our policies and practices by noted civil liberties and civil rights expert Laura W. Murphy and Megan Cacace, partner in the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax, PLLC. Read the full post.

We began removing developers’ access to data if someone hasn’t used the app in three months and put other restrictions on what kind of information apps can ask for. Read the full post.

We announced how we’re making our systems more transparent through the Media Rating Council (MRC) audit, which will include (but not be limited to):

• An evaluation of the development and enforcement of our Partner Monetization Policies and Content Monetization Policies and how these policies enforce the 4A’s/GARM Brand Suitability Framework, and comply with MRC’s Standards for Brand Safety
• An assessment of our ability to apply brand safety controls to ads shown within publisher content and the accuracy of our available reporting in these areas

Read the full post

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We partnered with other industry leaders and academic experts in September 2019 to create the Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC) in order to accelerate development of new ways to detect and prevent manipulated media. Read the full post.

According to this independent report, Facebook assessed 95.7% and Instagram assessed 91.8% of hate speech notifications in less than 24 hours, compared to 81.5% for YouTube and 76.6% for Twitter. Read the full post.

We launched the largest voting information and registration effort in US history with a goal to register 4 million people. Read the full post.

In addition to launching the largest voting information effort in US history, we added a new feature to the Ad Library, allowing you to track ad spending for US House and Senate races, in addition to spending for the candidates in the Presidential race. We’ll also offer a custom tracker to compare the spending of advertisers running political or issue ads. Read the full post.

We added a new control that allows people to see fewer political and issue ads on Facebook and Instagram. Read the full post.

‘Project Protect: A plan to combat online child sexual abuse’ is a renewed commitment and investment from the Technology Coalition expanding its scope and impact to protect kids online and guide its work for the next 15 years. Read the full post.

For May, we removed two networks of accounts, Pages and Groups. One of them, from Tunisia, focused on countries across Francophone Africa, and the other one targeted domestic audiences in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Read the full post.

We started labeling state-controlled media on Facebook. Read the full post.

We began verifying the identity of people behind certain high-reach posts on Facebook in the US. Read the full post.

The report introduced Instagram data across Hate Speech, Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity, Violent and Graphic Content, and Bullying and Harassment. We also added data on our efforts to combat organized hate on Facebook and Instagram. Read the full post.

For April, we removed eight networks of accounts, Pages and Groups. Two of them, from Russia and Iran, focused internationally (FGI), and the remaining six — in the US, Georgia, Myanmar and Mauritania — targeted domestic audiences in their respective countries (CIB). Read the full post.

Timed with the Community Standard Enforcement Report (version five) on May 12, we announced expanded availability of brand safety controls including content whitelists (renamed content allow lists), publisher whitelists (renamed publisher allow lists) for Audience Network, delivery reports and live stream exclusion at the account level. Read the full post.

FTC investigation that began after the events surrounding Cambridge Analytica in 2018 concluded with approval of agreement by the federal court. Read the full post.

We started providing the location of high-reach Facebook Page and Instagram accounts with high US reach that are based outside of the US. Read the full post.

Since COVID-19 was declared a public emergency, we have put warning labels on over 50 million pieces of content related to COVID with the help of over 60 fact-checking organizations from around the world. Read the full post.

Papers with Code, a free community-driven resource for machine learning (ML), introduced the ML Code Completeness Checklist to enhance reproducibility and provide a much-needed collection of best practices and code repository assessments, allowing users to build upon previously published work. Read the full post.

Read the full post

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Launched a new Coronavirus Information Center on Facebook to help people find accurate information and helpful resources. Read the full post.

In March, we removed 49 Facebook accounts, 69 Pages and 85 Instagram accounts for engaging in foreign interference. Read the full post.

We started publishing information about all networks we take down as part of regular CIB reports so people can see the progress we are making. Read the full post.

In February we announced that we’re exploring opening up our content moderation systems for external audit. This separate third-party audit will be completed by a reputable firm and include the incidence of violating content. Read the full post.

We launched an Election Operations Center that brings together subject matter experts to monitor misinformation or abuse related to the election or census. Read the full post.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) unveiled its strategy to create a more sustainable and responsible digital environment that protects consumers, the media industry and society. Read the full post.

We announced new transparency features and controls including Ad Library search and filtering and control over Custom Audiences from a list for ads about social issues, elections or politics. Read the full post.

We strengthened policy around misleading manipulated videos and highlighted standards for removal of content. Read the full post.