Facebook Unveils New Features To Curb Harassment

Facebook, the social media giant, announced new tools to curb harassment on the social media network, including its messaging app, Messenger. Using feedback from both users and organization groups, the social media giant created the new tools to help people who experience higher levels of harassment online, like women and journalists.

The new features will allow the users to proactively block people from contacting them on social media and ignore messages of particular persons. The company is also increasing security to prevent people from creating fake accounts, including looking at various signals like IP addresses. The new feature helps users block friend requests from any new account created by the user who was blocked earlier.

Another feature will allow users to move messages from a harasser out of their inbox to Filtered Messages without blocking them so they don’t get notified. Once conversations are moved to the Filtered Messages folder, the person harassing them will no longer get read receipts and won’t know they are blocked. In a blog post, the company’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis wrote, “We’ve heard stories from people who have blocked someone only to encounter the same harasser using a different account. In order to help prevent those bad encounters, we are building on existing features that prevent fake and inauthentic accounts on Facebook.”

For these latest features, Facebook considered feedback from 150 safety experts around the world. In a Facebook post, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg further thanked the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the Centre for Social Research (CSR) India and YWCA Canada for their contributions in designing these features.

Facebook has been trying hard to stop and prevent cyberbullying and harassment. However, even if the content is removed or accounts are disabled, there are ways around the rules that allow people to continue the harassment. Speaking about the need to feel safe, Sheryl Sandberg added, “Everyone deserves to be protected. We’ll keep doing what we can to make sure people feel safe on Facebook.”

According to the company, both the features are fully functional and ready to use!