New York (AFP)
Facebook on Thursday presented a series of measures aimed at cleaning up private groups forming around a particular theme on the platform, in particular by withdrawing from the recommendations groups that may incite violence or provide health advice.
Access to groups of a violent nature will also be restricted in the search tool and their content will appear less and less frequently in users' news feed.
In the event of a threat of acting out, even if these are symbols or veiled terms, these groups will be directly deleted.
Regarding groups dealing with health issues, "they can represent a positive space to give and receive support during difficult times in life," acknowledges Tom Alison, vice president of engineering at Facebook, in a blog post. .
“At the same time, it's crucial that people get medical information from authoritative sources,” Alison said.
Among other measures, Facebook will archive groups that do not have an administrator and prohibit administrators and moderators of deleted groups from creating new ones "for a period of time."
In addition, any user who has been called to order for having broken the rules of a group will have to have any new publication approved for a period of 30 days.
With the approach of the US presidential election in November, the social network is multiplying the announcements to share its activism against violent or deceptive groups.
The social network in particular banned groups from the far-right movement "Boogaloo" at the end of June and deleted several hundred groups linked to the pro-Trump conspiracy movement "QAnon" in August.
But for many associations for the protection of civil rights, the Californian giant still does too little to moderate the content.
Facebook was heavily criticized during the 2016 US presidential election for allowing false information and manipulative campaigns to spread.
© 2020 AFP