Facebook has been restricting more and more users in recent years through bans, temporary account freezes, and other restrictions. There are several reasons why the social media giant has been cracking down on its users.
Increasing Content Moderation
One of the main reasons why Facebook is restricting more accounts is due to an increase in content moderation. Facebook has over 15,000 human moderators reviewing posts, videos, images and other content on its platform. This is up from just 4,500 moderators in 2017. The company has been under intense scrutiny to better police harmful content such as hate speech, harassment, misinformation and livestreamed violence. By hiring more moderators and refining its content policies, Facebook is able to take action against more rule-breaking accounts through bans, temporary restrictions or content removal.
Automated Systems
In addition to human moderators, Facebook also relies heavily on artificial intelligence and automated systems to detect rule-violating content and accounts. Facebook uses machine learning to analyze billions of posts per day and take down content that violates its Community Standards. These automated systems are able to restrict accounts more quickly than human reviews. However, critics have noted that Facebook’s AI often makes mistakes and wrongfully removes benign content and restricts accounts that have not actually broken any rules. As Facebook expands its AI moderation efforts, more accounts are likely to get accidentally caught up in automated restriction campaigns.
Increased Scrutiny of “Fake” Accounts
Facebook has been under pressure from regulators, lawmakers and the public to crack down on “fake” and bot accounts on its platforms. Inauthentic accounts are used to spread misinformation, manipulate public opinion, inflate followers and likes, and improperly sway elections. Since 2018, Facebook has doubled down on efforts to eliminate fake accounts. The company estimates that about 5% of its worldwide month active users are fake accounts. While increased scrutiny of fake accounts is important for integrity, it inevitably leads Facebook to restrict some legitimate accounts that get falsely identified as inauthentic under its detection methods.
Advertising Guidelines
Facebook has also tightened its rules around advertising and monetization on its platform. The company has strict policies on the types of ads and advertisers allowed. Accounts that violate the advertising guidelines face restrictions. Offenses can include running banned ads promoting illegal or regulated goods, using improper targeting, displaying unauthorized branded content, and other infractions. Restricting rule-breaking advertising accounts helps Facebook maintain compliance and prevent abuse. But heightened enforcement can again lead to some false positives where legitimate accounts get incorrectly penalized.
Election Integrity Efforts
Facebook was widely criticized for its failure to prevent election interference and the spread of “fake news” during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Since then, the company has implemented policies to improve election integrity on its platform. This includes restricting accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior to influence elections. Facebook also verifies the identities of political ad buyers and provides more transparency around political ads and pages. These increased safeguards during election periods contribute to more restrictions imposed against accounts violating the platform’s election-related policies.
COVID-19 Misinformation Crackdowns
Facebook has been aggressively trying to combat the spread of false and harmful misinformation related to COVID-19 and vaccines. The company regularly updates its policies banning coronavirus misinformation and quickly removes violating content. Entire pages, groups and accounts that repeatedly share COVID-19 hoaxes and disinformation face restrictions. While limiting COVID falsehoods is important for public health, Facebook’s heavy-handed approach has resulted in some accounts getting unfairly suspended for making posts that were wrongly deemed as misinformation.
Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior
Facebook frequently announces mass removals of accounts, pages and groups engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB). This is when groups of accounts or pages work together to mislead people about who they are or what they are doing. By taking swift action against CIB networks, Facebook aims to address malicious influence operations on topics ranging from elections to social issues. However, legitimate activist groups have sometimes gotten caught up by mistake in the broad dragnets against supposed CIB.
Legal Compliance
Facebook restricts certain accounts to comply with applicable laws and legal requests. For example, in some countries, Facebook will restrict access to accounts that share content deemed illegal under local laws. Facebook also respects legal requests to temporarily restrict accounts that are under investigation for possible criminal offenses. While Facebook aims to respect the laws of the countries it operates in, legal compliance inevitably leads to more restrictions against accounts that violate local laws, even if their offenses would be permissible in other jurisdictions.
Targeting “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations”
Facebook has policies prohibiting “dangerous individuals and organizations” on its platform. This includes terrorist groups, hate organizations, criminal groups, and violent conspiracy theory groups like QAnon. Facebook has engineers and analysts focused on identifying and designating these dangerous entities. Accounts associated with prohibited dangerous organizations face immediate and stringent restrictions. Facebook defends this policy as an important way to limit harm and offline violence. However, digital rights groups haveexpressed concern about the company essentially banning certain viewpoints and ideologies.
Reducing Harmful Conspiracy Theories
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has identified fighting harmful conspiracy theories like QAnon as a major priority. The platform aims to reduce the reach of conspiracy content through updated recommendation algorithms. Problematic conspiracy groups and pages have been removed entirely. And Facebook cracks down on accounts that repeatedly share known conspiracy content. These efforts have led to large QAnon and adjacent conspiracy theory networks being wiped off Facebook. But critics argue this approach risks silencing viewpoints that question official narratives.
Violating Community Standards
Facebook continues to expand its platform rules and Community Standards to keep up with emerging issues. Areas like health misinformation, bullying, hate speech, and dangerous individuals/groups now have expanded policies. With more rules on the books, Facebook has additional justification to restrict accounts that break the rules. While keeping Facebook safer is positive, more rules inevitably mean more violations and restrictions against accounts engaging in newly prohibited behavior.
Enforcing Real Name Policies
Facebook requires users to provide their real full name on their account. The company sees its authentic identity policy as crucial to maintaining a healthy community and minimizing harmful anonymous activity. Facebook frequently checks for and restricts accounts using fake names. Requiring real names enables improved accountability and reporting of abuse. However, Facebook’s strict name policies have also banned accounts using stage names, maiden names, nicknames, and names from marginalized cultures.
Repetitive Violations of Any Rule
Facebook employs an “escalating violation” policy for accounts that repeatedly break platform rules. First-time minor offenses may lead to content removal or temporary posting restrictions. But accounts that continually violate policies will face lengthier restrictions, permanent disabling or full platform bans. So any sort of recurring Community Standards violation – whether for harassment, misinformation, hate speech, nudity etc. – can result in increased restrictions on an account’s ability to post or interact on Facebook.
Conclusion
In summary, Facebook restricts accounts for many reasons, including increased content moderation, misinformation crackdowns, advertising policy enforcement, election integrity efforts, dangerous organizations bans, legal compliance, community standards violations, name policy infractions and repetitive offenses. The scale and strictness of restrictions has increased as Facebook aims to provide more safety, combat abuse and satisfy critics. But this proactive approach also frequently results in false positives, over-enforcement and accidental restrictions against benign accounts. Moving forward, Facebook must strike a balance between effectively moderating abuses versus wrongfully silencing users.