Facebook is updating its terms of service which will be effective from October 1.

As part of its new terms of service, the social media giant has broadened its authority to take down content that could lead the company into trouble.

Several users of the platform have received a notification that reads, “Effective October 1, 2020, section 3.2 of our Terms of Service will be updated to include: We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook.”

The section details the content that violates its community guidelines and thus cannot be shared on the platform. It also states that the platform has the authority to remove or restrict such content.

With the new guidelines, Facebook will also have the authority to remove content that can hinder its regulatory compliance.

The new terms will be effective ahead of US elections. The platform, along with other tech giants including Twitter, Google and Microsoft, has been working with US government agencies to counter shared threats to the online public conversation ahead of the 2020 US Elections.

Earlier this week, the platform published a report stating that it had removed various pages and accounts in a bid to prevent coordinated inauthentic behaviour.

“In 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 both domestic audiences in Pakistan and also in India,” Facebook said.

It had removed 521 Facebook accounts, 72 Instagram accounts, 147 Facebook Pages and 78 Groups in total.

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