Meta expands protection for journalists, human rights defenders vs. online harassment

Facebook's parent firm Meta said it is expanding protection for public figures, including journalists and human rights defenders, against online harassment.

In a statement, Meta said it has rolled out a free digital security and safety program to secure and protect journalists and human rights defenders' digital assets and counter online harassment.

The Journalist Safety Hub would centralize all resources and tools available on its platforms.

“We have made several updates to our Community Standards, including expanding protections for public figures such as journalists and human rights defenders,” the company said.

“We now remove more types of harmful content such as claims about sexual activity, comparisons to animals and attacks through negative physical descriptions. Our policies now also provide stronger protections against gender-based harassment for everyone, including public figures,” it added.

According to Meta, new policies were also launched last year against “mass harassment and brigading” that target individuals at heightened risk of offline harm.

“This includes attacks against dissidents—even if the content on its own wouldn’t violate our policies. We also remove state-linked and adversarial networks of accounts, Pages and Groups that work together to harass or try to silence people,” it said.

“These efforts and updates to policies are informed by our independent Human Rights Impact Assessment Report on the Philippines published in 2021,” it added.

It also earlier shared new strategies it will be implementing against COVID-19 misinformation and for the May 2022 polls. It earlier removed 24 million pieces of false COVID-19 and vaccine content on Facebook.

Meta said it has been continuously improving policies to fight misinformation shared on its platforms. — BM, GMA News