Facebook is going to put groups on probation for violating content rules

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been trying to stem the spread of misinformation for a while now and have been employing different measures for that. The latest of them for Facebook is that the platform is going to put groups on probation if they have too many posts that violate Facebook’s content rules.

As per The Washington Post report, Facebook is going to restrict any group, public or private, if they have multiple posts violating the platform’s community standards. Moderators of the groups will have to approve any post manually for 60 days and there is going to be no appeal available for groups if they are put on probation.

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“We are temporarily requiring admins and moderators of some political and social groups in the US to approve all posts, if their group has a number of Community Standards violations from members,” Facebook spokesperson Leonard Lam said in a statement to The Verge. It is “a measure we’re taking in order to protect people during this unprecedented time,” Lam added.

Admins will be notified of their group’s status and will be informed when the restrictions will be lifted. Over the probationary period, Facebook will be keeping tabs on how the moderators of these restricted groups are dealing with posts. If the moderators continue to allow posts that violate rules, Facebook may shut down the group entirely.

Facebook shut down the Stop the Steal group just a few days ago. The group had more than 300,000 members and was posting election misinformation about vote-rigging and has been falsely claiming that Democrats were trying to steal the election.