Facebook will now personalise restrictions for “objectionable” content you see

Facebook has oft times faced flak for its censorship policies online, struggling to draw the line between responsible censorship and freedom of expression. The social media giant is now looking to adopt a new method to help solve the problem. 

Facebook has said it will now allow users to define for themselves what is “objectionable” content, in an effort to personalise censorship to each user’s preference. The new policy, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post, could help a user understand when they should be reporting content for crossing the line. “The idea is to give everyone in the community options for how they would like to set the content policy for themselves,” he wrote. “Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings. We will periodically ask you these questions to increase participation and so you don't need to dig around to find them.”

For those users that don’t make a decision, the default setting will be the same as the majority of users in their area. However, they can also go back and change the setting manually should they so wish. “With a broader range of controls, content will only be taken down if it is more objectionable than the most permissive options allowed and Facebook will also block content based on standards and local laws,” Zuckerberg added. The company’s AI system is being trained to understand text, images etc in order for it to be able to classify objectionable content as such in future.