Policy details

Change log

CHANGE LOG

Change log

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23 Dec 2021
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Policy rationale

In an effort to prevent and disrupt real-world harm, we do not allow organisations or individuals that proclaim a violent mission or are engaged in violence to have a presence on Facebook. We assess these entities based on their behaviour both online and offline – most significantly, their ties to violence. Under this policy, we designate individuals, organisations and networks of people. These designations are divided into three tiers that indicate the level of content enforcement, with Tier 1 resulting in the most extensive enforcement because we believe that these entities have the most direct ties to offline harm.

Tier 1 focuses on entities that engage in serious offline harm – including organising or advocating for violence against civilians, repeatedly dehumanising or advocating for harm against people based on protected characteristics, or engaging in systematic criminal operations. Tier 1 entities include terrorist, hate and criminal organisations. We remove praise, substantive support and representation of Tier 1 entities, as well as their leaders, founders or prominent members. Tier 1 includes hate organisations, criminal organisations, including those designated by the United States government as specially designated narcotics trafficking kingpins (SDNTKs), and terrorist organisations, including entities and individuals designated by the United States government as foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs) or specially designated global terrorists (SDGTs). We remove praise, substantive support and representation of Tier 1 entities, as well as their leaders, founders or prominent members.

In addition, we do not allow content that praises, substantively supports or represents events that Facebook designates as violating violent events – including terrorist attacks, hate events, multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence, multiple murders or hate crimes. Nor do we allow praise, substantive support or representation of the perpetrator(s) of such attacks. We also remove content that praises, substantively supports or represents ideologies that promote hate, such as nazism and white supremacy.

Tier 2 focuses on entities that engage in violence against state or military actors, but do not generally target civilians – what we call "violent non-state actors". We remove all substantive support and representation of these entities, their leaders and their prominent members. We remove any praise of these groups' violent activities.

Tier 3 focuses on entities that may repeatedly engage in violations of our Hate Speech or Dangerous Organisations Policies on or off the platform, or demonstrate strong intent to engage in offline violence in the near future, but have not necessarily engaged in violence to date or advocated for violence against others based on their protected characteristics. This includes militarised social movements, violence-inducing conspiracy networks, and individuals and groups banned for promoting hatred. Tier 3 entities may not have a presence, or coordinate on our platforms.

We recognise that users may share content that includes references to designated dangerous organisations and individuals to report on, condemn or neutrally discuss them or their activities. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of discussions while simultaneously limiting risks of potential offline harm. We thus require people to clearly indicate their intent when creating or sharing such content. If a user's intention is ambiguous or unclear, we default to removing content.

In line with international human rights law, our policies allow discussions about the human rights of designated individuals or members of designated dangerous entities, unless the content includes other praise, substantive support or representation of designated entities or other policy violations, such as incitement to violence.

Please see our Corporate Human Rights Policy for more information about our commitment to internationally recognised human rights.

We remove:

We remove praise, substantive support and representation of various dangerous organisations. These concepts apply to the organisations themselves, their activities and their members. These concepts do not proscribe peaceful advocacy for particular political outcomes.

Praise, defined as any of the below:

  • Speak positively about a designated entity or event;
    • E.g. "The fighters for the Islamic State are really brave!"
  • Give a designated entity or event a sense of achievement;
    • E.g. "Timothy McVeigh is a martyr."
  • Legitimising the cause of a designated entity by making claims that their hateful, violent or criminal conduct is legally, morally or otherwise justified or acceptable;
    • E.g. "Hitler did nothing wrong."
  • Aligning oneself ideologically with a designated entity or event.
    • E.g. "I stand with Brenton Tarrant."

We remove praise of Tier 1 entities and designated events. We will also remove praise of violence carried out by Tier 2 entities.

Substantive support, defined as any of the below:

  • Any act which improves the financial status of a designated entity – including funnelling money towards or away from a designated entity;
    • E.g. "Donate to the KKK!"
  • Any act which provides material aid to a designated entity or event;
    • E.g. "If you want to send care packages to the Sinaloa Cartel, use this address:"
  • Putting out a call to action on behalf of a designated entity or event;
    • E.g. "Contact the Atomwaffen Division – (XXX) XXX-XXXX"
  • Recruiting on behalf of a designated entity or event;
    • E.g. "If you want to fight for the Caliphate, DM me"
  • Channelling information or resources, including official communications, on behalf of a designated entity or event
    • E.g. Directly quoting a designated entity without caption that condemns, neutrally discusses or is a part of news reporting.

We remove substantive support of Tier 1 and Tier 2 entities and designated events.

Representation, defined as any of the below:

  • Stating that you are a member of a designated entity, or are a designated entity;
    • E.g. "I am a grand dragon of the KKK."
  • Creating a Page, profile, event, group or other Facebook entity that is or purports to be owned by a designated entity or run on their behalf, or is or purports to be a designated event.
    • E.g. A Page named "American Nazi Party".

We remove representation of Tier 1 and 2 designated organisations, hate-banned entities and designated events.

Types and tiers of dangerous organisations

Tier 1: Terrorism, organised hate, large-scale criminal activity, attempted multiple-victim violence, multiple victim violence, multiple murders and violating violent events

We do not allow individuals or organisations involved in organised crime, including those designated by the United States government as specially designated narcotics trafficking kingpins (SDNTKs); hate; or terrorism, including entities designated by the United States government as foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs) or specially designated global terrorists (SDGTs), to have a presence on the platform. We also don't allow other people to represent these entities. We do not allow leaders or prominent members of these organisations to have a presence on the platform, symbols that represent them to be used on the platform or content that praises them or their acts. In addition, we remove any coordination of substantive support for these individuals and organisations.

We do not allow content that praises, substantively supports or represents events that Meta designates as terrorist attacks, hate events, multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence, serial murders, hate crimes or violating violent events.

We also do not allow praise, substantive support or representation of designated hateful ideologies.

Terrorist organisations and individuals, defined as a non-state actor that:

  • Engages in, advocates or lends substantial support to purposive and planned acts of violence,
  • Which causes or attempts to cause death, injury or serious harm to civilians, or any other person not taking direct part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, and/or significant damage to property linked to death, serious injury or serious harm to civilians
  • With the intent to coerce, intimidate and/or influence a civilian population, government or international organisation
  • In order to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim.

Hate organisations, defined as an association of three or more people that:

  • is organised under a name, sign or symbol; and
  • has an ideology, statements or physical actions that attack individuals based on characteristics, including race, religious affiliation, national origin, disability, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation or serious disease.

Criminal organisations, defined as an association of three or more people that:

  • is united under a name, colour(s), hand gesture(s) or recognised indicia; and
  • has engaged in or threatens to engage in criminal activity such as homicide, drug trafficking or kidnapping.

Multiple-victim violence and multiple murders

  • We consider an event to be multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence if it results in three or more casualties in one incident, defined as deaths or serious injuries. Any individual who has committed such an attack is considered to be a perpetrator or an attempted perpetrator of multiple-victim violence.
  • We consider any individual who has committed two or more murders over multiple incidents or locations a multiple murderer.

Hateful ideologies

  • While our designations of organisations and individuals focus on behaviour, we also recognise that there are certain ideologies and beliefs that are inherently tied to violence and attempts to organise people around calls for violence or exclusion of others based on their protected characteristics. In these cases, we designate the ideology itself and remove content that supports this ideology from our platform. These ideologies include:
    • Nazism
    • White supremacy
    • White nationalism
    • White separatism
  • We remove explicit praise, substantive support and representation of these ideologies, and remove individuals and organisations that ascribe to one or more of these hateful ideologies.

Tier 2: Violent non-state actors

Organisations and individuals designated by Meta as violent non-state actors are not allowed to have a presence on Facebook, or have a presence maintained by others on their behalf. As these communities are actively engaged in violence, substantive support of these entities is similarly not allowed. We will also remove praise of violence carried out by these entities.

Violent non-state actors, defined as any non-state actor that:

  • engages in purposive and planned acts of violence primarily against a government military or other armed communities; and
  • that causes or attempts to
    • cause death to persons taking direct part in hostilities in an armed conflict, and/or
    • deprive communities of access to vital infrastructure and natural resources, and/or bring significant damage to property, linked to death, serious injury or serious harm to civilians

Tier 3: Militarised social movements, violence-inducing conspiracy networks and hate banned entities

Pages, Communities, Events and Profiles or other Facebook entities that are, or claim to be – maintained by, or on behalf of, militarised social movements and violence-inducing conspiracy networks are prohibited. Admins of these pages, communities and events will also be removed.

Click here to read more about how we address movements and organisations tied to violence.

We do not allow representation of organisations and individuals designated by Meta as hate-banned entities.

Militarised social movements (MSMs), which include:

  • Militia communities, defined as non-state actors that use weapons as a part of their training, communication or presence; and are structured or operate as unofficial military or security forces and:
    • Coordinate in preparation for violence or civil war; or
    • Distribute information about the tactical use of weapons for combat; or
    • Coordinate militarised tactical coordination in a present or future armed civil conflict or civil war.
  • Communities supporting violent acts amid protests, defined as non-state actors that repeatedly:
    • Coordinate, promote, admit to or engage in:
    • Acts of street violence against civilians or law enforcement; or
    • Arson, looting or other destruction of property; or
    • Threaten to violently disrupt an election process; or
    • Promote bringing weapons to a location when the stated intent is to intimidate people amid a protest.

Violence-inducing conspiracy networks (VICNs), defined as a non-state actor that:

  • Organises under a name, sign, mission statement or symbol; and
  • Promote theories that attribute violent or dehumanising behaviour to people or organisations that have been debunked by credible sources; and
  • Has inspired multiple incidents of real-world violence by adherents motivated by the desire to draw attention to or redress the supposed harms promoted by these debunked theories.

Hate-banned entities, defined as entities that engage in repeated hateful conduct or rhetoric, but do not rise to the level of a Tier 1 entity because they have not engaged in or explicitly advocated for violence, or because they lack sufficient connections to previously designated organisations or figures.

For the following Community Standards, we require additional information and/or context to enforce:

  • In certain cases, we will allow content that may otherwise violate the Community Standards when it is determined that the content is satirical. Content will only be allowed if the violating elements of the content are being satirised or attributed to something or someone else in order to mock or criticise them.

User experiences

See some examples of what enforcement looks like for people on Facebook, such as: what it looks like to report something that you don't think should be on Facebook, to be told that you've violated our Community Standards and to see a warning screen over certain content.

Note: We're always improving, so what you see here may be slightly outdated compared to what we currently use.

Data
Prevalence

Percentage of times that people saw violating content

Content actioned

Number of pieces of violating content that we took action on

Proactive rate

Percentage of violating content that we found before people reported it

Appealed content

Number of pieces of content that people appealed after we took action on it

Restored content

Number of pieces of content that we restored after we originally took action on it

Prevalence

Percentage of times that people saw violating content

Content actioned

Number of pieces of violating content that we took action on

Proactive rate

Percentage of violating content that we found before people reported it

Appealed content

Number of pieces of content that people appealed after we took action on it

Restored content

Number of pieces of content that we restored after we originally took action on it

Reporting
1
Universal entry point

We have an option to report, whether it's on a post, a comment, a story, a message or something else.

2
Getting started

We help people report things that they don't think should be on our platform.

3
Select a problem

We ask people to tell us more about what's wrong. This helps us send the report to the right place.

4
Report submitted

After these steps, we submit the report. We also lay out what people should expect next.

Post-report communication
1
Update via notifications

After we've reviewed the report, we'll send the reporting user a notification.

2
More detail in the Support Inbox

We'll share more details about our review decision in the Support Inbox. We'll notify people that this information is there and send them a link to it.

3
Appeal option

If people think we made the wrong decision, they can request another review.

4
Post-appeal communication

We'll send a final response after we've re-reviewed the content, again to the Support Inbox.

Takedown experience
1
Immediate notification

When someone posts something that violates our Community Standards, we'll tell them.

2
Additional context

We'll also address common misperceptions around enforcement.

3
Explain the policy

We'll give people easy-to-understand explanations about why their content was removed.

4
Ask for input

After we've established the context for our decision and explained our policy, we'll ask people what they'd like to do next, including letting us know if they think we made a mistake.

5
Tell us more

If people disagree with the decision, we'll ask them to tell us more.

6
Set expectations

Here, we set expectations on what will happen next.

Warning screens
1
Warning screens in context

We cover certain content in News Feed and other surfaces, so people can choose whether to see it.

2
More information

In this example, we give more context on why we've covered the photo with more context from independent fact-checkers

Enforcement

We have the same policies around the world, for everyone on Facebook.

Review teams

Our global team of over 15,000 reviewers work every day to keep people on Facebook safe.

Stakeholder engagement

Outside experts, academics, NGOs and policymakers help inform the Facebook Community Standards.

Get help with dangerous individuals and organisations

Learn what you can do if you see something on Facebook that goes against our Community Standards.