Facebook to Update Its Community Standards, Clarify How It Handles Satirical Content

The popular social media company Facebook has now revealed that it will be soon updating its community standards to be clearer about how it handles satirical content.

The company said in a blog post, "We'll add information to the Community Standards that makes it clear where we consider satire as part of our assessment of context-specific decisions. This change will allow teams to consider satire when assessing potential Hate Speech violations."

The Verge has learnt that the company's decision has been recommended by its Oversight Board who determined Facebook was wrong to remove a user's comment with a reference to the Turkish government, based on a meme.

Facebook removed that post, citing its ''Cruel and Insensitive Community Standard'', which says it will remove posts that target "victims of serious physical or emotional harm," which includes the use of memes and GIFs.

Facebook later reclassified the removal so it fell under its ''Hate Speech Community Standard'' as per The Verge.

Following this, the Oversight Board pointed out that while Facebook has said it will make exceptions for satire, it doesn't specify how or what qualifies as satire in its guidelines.

In a reply to that, the social media giant in an official blog post said that in addition to making its guidelines around satire clearer, it would "initiate a review of identical content with parallel context," and may take further action.