Expanding our focus on better explaining our policies
UPDATED DEC 5, 2024
- Over the summer we launched a Facebook feature for Creators that allowed people to erase their first policy violation strike by completing an educational program.
- We’ve now expanded that feature across Facebook and Instagram.
- This isn’t available for the most severe policy violations, and violating content will still be removed.
Our now-combined Community Standards outline what is and isn’t allowed on Instagram, Threads, Facebook and Messenger. When content violates these standards, we remove the content and assign a "strike" to the account that posted it. As strikes accrue, particularly on serious violations, they often come with account restrictions.
However, we know everyone makes mistakes. Our research shows that the vast majority of users don’t intend to break our rules and may not even be aware that they’re doing so. That’s why this summer we rolled out a new feature for Creators using Professional Mode on Facebook that allowed people to correct their first mistake for most first-time policy violations. Now we’ve expanded that feature to everyone on Facebook and are starting to roll it out on Instagram.
This feature allows people to erase their first strike and any resulting account restrictions by completing a short educational program. We believe a focus on better explaining our policies rather than just punishing people will be a more effective way of helping people understand our policies and keeping our platforms safe. What we’ve already seen from our initial launch this summer has been promising — those who successfully removed their first strikes for violating a policy were more likely to say they understood Facebook’s policy decisions and became less likely to violate that policy again. In fact, we saw a 15% increase in people feeling they better understood our policies and enforcement.
We won’t offer this educational option for the most serious violations of Community Standards, such as posting content that involves sexual exploitation, the sale of high-risk drugs or the glorification of dangerous organizations and individuals.
We’ll continue to expand this feature to everyone on Instagram, and will continue to monitor and expand this feature in the future.
How It Will Work
When someone violates a policy for the first time, in most cases they’ll now see a notification along with two options: Appeal the Decision, or Remove the Warning. They can select Remove the Warning, and the app will guide them through a short educational course on the policy they violated. When done, the strike - and any restrictions that came with it - will be removed. This option is available once in a 12-month period for first-time strikes on Facebook profiles, Pages, and Instagram profiles.
We know that everyone makes mistakes, and most people on our apps don't mean to break our rules, just as we know that we also sometimes make mistakes in our enforcement that could cause confusion to the person who posted the content. We hope this program will improve the experiences of people on our apps, and we'll continue to adjust the program in the future as needed.
