How we update the Facebook Community Standards

UPDATED

JAN 20, 2022

There are a number of reasons why Meta may draft a new policy for the Facebook Community Standards and Instagram Community Guidelines or revise an existing one.

Here’s how it works.

Meta’s Content Policy team, which sits in more than a dozen locations around the world, is responsible for developing our Community Standards and Community Guidelines. The team includes subject matter experts in issues like hate speech, child safety and terrorism as well as people with experience in criminal prosecution, rape crisis counseling, academics, human rights, law and education. Many have also worked on issues of voice and safety long before coming to Meta.

The Integrity team assesses the global impact of potential policy changes and builds the technology to scale the detection and enforcement of new policies.

The Global Operations team, whose employees, contractors and outsourcing partners are responsible for enforcing our policies, keep us informed about trends or times when we may need to clarify a policy.

Research teams may also point us to data or user sentiment that seems best addressed through policy-making.

Sometimes, we identify a gap in our policy, or an external stakeholder tells us that a policy fails to address an issue that’s important to them. In other cases, the press draws attention to a policy gap.