UPDATED 23:01 EDT / AUGUST 14 2019

APPS

Facebook changes Groups privacy settings and vows crackdown on extreme content

Privacy settings for Facebook Inc.’s Groups are changing to make things simpler, the company announced on Wednesday.

The social media giant said that from now on public, closed and secret group settings will either be just public or private. The administrators of those groups will have the option to make the group visible to other users or hidden. The change, said Facebook’s product manager for Facebook groups, Jordan Davis, is for “clarity.”

“Having two privacy settings — public and private — will help make it clearer about who can find the group and see the members and posts that are part of it,” said Davis. “We’ve also heard that most people prefer to use the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ to describe the privacy settings of groups they belong to.”

The change comes after working with global privacy experts and advocates over the last year, said Facebook, adding that it will also now give administrators of groups more control. “By separating the privacy settings for posts and group membership from the overall discoverability of the group, it is easier for admins to understand and manage their group privacy settings, and also easier for members to know important information like who can find the group,” said Davis.

Groups that used to be “secret” will now be “private” and “hidden.” Groups that were “closed” before will now be “private” and “visible.” Anything set to public before will remain that way.

The company also said its global team of 30,000 people have been working on a “Safe Communities Initiative,” with the aim of protecting people who use groups and weeding out groups that break the rules. Content is first flagged by an improved artificial intelligence called “Group Quality” and then human moderators decide if it has violated Community Standards.

It will come as no surprise that there has been a slew of groups involved in racist or highly offensive behavior of some kind. Facebook’s proactive approach might be a step in the right direction, although there have been many reports of private groups recently breaking Facebook’s rules regarding offensive language.

At the same time, some critics say extreme content is just being pushed further underground as administrators change their privacy settings to be not visible.

“Many of the groups I study are now changing their privacy status to be closed and not visible, making it more difficult for content violations to be identified by outsiders,” one researcher told The Guardian. “I am very concerned this will further allow conspiracy communities and violent extremists to further obfuscate their activity.”

Image: mkhmarketing/Flickr

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