If you've never read the Facebook rule book, its set of what's allowed and what's not allowed, you might want to settle down and give it a look over now that the social networking site has refreshed its language, revamped some guidelines and included some interesting insight on how it decides what to share with law enforcement requests.
Calling the guidelines a set of "Community Standards," Facebook makes it very clear that there are very few hard and fast rules given the varied users and regions that come into play on Facebook. The big focus, says Facebook, is making users feel safe.
"These policies will help you understand what type of sharing is allowed on Facebook, and what type of content may be reported to us and removed. Because of the diversity of our global community, please keep in mind that something that may be disagreeable or disturbing to you may not violate our Community Standards," states the Facebook page outlining the guidelines announced Sunday.
The standards are significantly longer than before and divided into four sections: privacy and security, behavior, safety and intellectual property.
The Community Standards cover everything from the goals of the site to direct threat situations, bullying and harassment, criminal activity, dangerous organizations, self-injury incidents, criminal activity, sexual violence and exploitation and regulated goods.
Other topics also covered include nudity, hate speech, violence and graphic content.
There's also insight and guidance on how users can keep account and personal data secure, how to identify fraud and spam and what Facebook provides in terms of access to pages of those who die.
One of the more interesting segments, given the increasing number of law enforcement requests to social networks and other technology services providers, is how Facebook approaches governmental requests for data and content control.
"Governments also sometimes ask us to remove content that violates local laws, but does not violate our Community Standards. If, after careful legal review, we find that the content is illegal under local law, then we may make it unavailable only in the relevant country or territory," states Facebook.
The social network says it's seeing an increase in global government requests. It also says the number of requests based on content violating local laws grew by 11 percent in the first half of 2014, with 9,707 content posts restricted. The U.S. government made 14,274 requests for data, relating to 21,731 users, with the social network providing "some" data in 79 percent of the requests.
"Moving forward, we will continue to scrutinize each government request and push back when we find deficiencies. We will also continue to push governments around the world to reform their surveillance practices in a way that maintains the safety and security of their people while ensuring their rights and freedoms are protected," states Facebook in regards to the data request activity.
