Governing the Facebook community was a simple affair in the past, but now things have gotten complicated and Mark Zuckerberg and friends are not entirely sure what to do. At the moment, Facebook has over 1.39 billion users worldwide, so it is not easy to keep track of what everything that is going on for a smooth operation of the social network.
Despite the difficulties, the company still aims to create a euphoria that respects the beliefs of everyone without being too demanding. As such, Facebook updated its community guidelines recently, making sure to let users know what is viewed as good and bad behavior.
“It’s a challenge to maintain one set of standards that meets the needs of a diverse global community,” according to Facebook executives in a news release declaring the update. “For one thing, people from different backgrounds may have different ideas about what’s appropriate to share—a video posted as a joke by one person might be upsetting to someone else, but it may not violate our standards.”
It is very much clear from what is going on here that Facebook’s community guidelines will always be something that never gets completed due to the ever changing world. Furthermore, many things go unnoticed due to how the system relies on users making a report.
Sure, if users do not file reports, the Facebook team of community administrators many never know that certain rules have been broken. However, there must be a way around this issue, but it may cause for privacy problems, and no one wants that.
Another thing, Facebook is not consistent in how it enforces its rules. For example, the social network is bent on making sure everyone uses their real names, but a while back when the drag queens protested this law, the company allowed them to use their stage names while still forcing everyone else to adhere to the real name rule.
In our minds, no one should be given special treatment, and until Facebook refrain from going down this route, we will continue to have little faith in its community guidelines.
Source: [Facebook]
