Facebook group administrators have been given extensive powers to regulate content posted on the pages they moderate. Their new oversight role is to reduce the spread of harmful content such as fake news and conspiracy theories.
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Why the change?
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced recently that it had introduced new features for groups including the option for admins to auto-decline posts that have been determined to be misinformation by fact-checkers. This way, the post will not be shown to other members within the group.
In a blogpost, Facebook’s VP of Communities Maria Angelidou-Smith said:
we’re announcing new features to help Facebook group admins keep their groups safe and healthy, reduce misinformation, and to make it easier for them to manage and grow their groups with relevant audiences.
Facebook has come under so much fire for the spread of false information on its platform, especially in private groups which have no oversight.
In recent years, groups on the platform have been blamed for giving more visibility to misinformation and conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the rise of white supremacy in America and other Western countries.
Read more:
⋙ Facebook: The big change coming to messenger
⋙ Facebook, Instagram: Mark Zuckerberg threatening to shut down social media platforms
⋙ Coronavirus: watch out for these myths and ‘fake news' circulating the internet
What else is new?
Building on the existing functionality of ‘mute’, Facebook has introduced a ‘suspend’ feature so admins and moderators can temporarily suspend group members and participants from posting, commenting, reacting, participating in a group chat.
The platform has also introduced new features to make it easier for admins and moderators to manage their groups. These include:
Using Admin Assist to automatically approve or decline member requests, based on specific criteria they set up, such as whether the prospective member has completed all member questions.
Apart from curbing the spread of fake news, these new features are also to:
help admins who want to grow their communities by reaching the relevant people
