Facebook to update its Community Standards on handling satirical content

Facebook will update its Community Standards to better clarify how it handles satirical content.

The decision followed recent recommendations by the company’s Oversight Board. The OverSight Board had made various recommendations related to the social media major’s assessment of satirical content after it determined that Facebook was wrong to remove a user's comment referencing the Turkish Government, based on a meme, as reported by The Verge.

The meme had been removed for violating its policy on hate speech, as laid out in the Facebook Community Standards. “We do not allow hate speech on Facebook, even in the context of satire, because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion, and in some cases, may promote real-world violence,” Facebook had said.

The Oversight Board, in its decision, pointed out that while Facebook makes certain exceptions for satire in some cases, what qualifies as satire has not been clearly communicated to users in its guidelines under the Hate Speech Community Standard.“We’ll add information to the Community Standards that makes it clear where we consider satire as part of our assessment of context-specific decisions,” Facebook said in a blog post. “This change will allow teams to consider satire when assessing potential Hate Speech violations,” it said.

It plans to complete this update by the end of this year.

‘Satire framework’

The platform will also complete a new “satire framework” to help regional and escalations teams to evaluate content for satire. “We are assessing how to apply this review at scale,” it said.

Separately, the platform will also initiate a review of “identical content with parallel context”, similar to the case reviewed by the Oversight Board.

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