Facebook rolls out new anti-bullying and harrassment tools
- Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018
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Facebook has rolled out a new set of tools to stamp out bullying and harassment of both private individuals and public figures on its platform.
Now, people can hide or delete multiple comments at once within the options menu of their posts. For the time being, only desktop and Android users will be able to use the feature, but iOS users should gain the ability ‘in the coming months’. Alongside this, similar to Twitter, Facebook is testing ways to search for and block offensive words from appearing within comments.
The social network is also rolling out the ability for users to anonymously report bullying and harassment on behalf of their friends or family members. And decisions made by Facebook regarding the content can be appealed.
In regards to public figures, Facebook is expanding the policies it originally introduced to protect young public figures only. These policies will now cover public figures from harassment regardless of their age.
“We hope the additional steps we’re taking will help people who face bullying and harassment on Facebook,” said Antigone Davis, global head of safety at Facebook, in a blog post. “We know our job is never done when it comes to keeping people safe, and we’ll continue listening to feedback on how we can build better tools and improve our policies.”