Facebook’s new policy for fighting ‘coordinated social harm’

San Francisco: Facebook has announced a new policy that allows it to take out networks of accounts engaging in “coordinated social harm”.

The company said the change could help the platform fight harmful behaviour it wouldn’t otherwise be able to fully address under its existing rules, reports Engadget.

Unlike “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, which is Facebook’s policy for dealing with harm that comes from networks of fake accounts, coordinated social harm gives the company a framework to address harmful actions from legitimate accounts, the report said.

During a call with reporters, the company’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said the policy is necessary because bad actors are increasingly trying to “blur the lines” between authentic and inauthentic behaviour, the report said.

“We are seeing groups that pose a risk of significant social harm, that also engage in violations on our platform, but don’t necessarily rise to the level for either of those where we’d enforce against for inauthenticity under CIB (coordinated inauthentic behaviour) or under our dangerous organisations policy,” Gleicher said.

“So this protocol is designed to capture these groups that are sort of in-between spaces.”

Gleicher mentioned that the new protocols could help Facebook address networks of accounts spreading anti-vaccine misinformation or groups trying to organize political violence.