These are mostly regarding doxing on Facebook, which includes removing exceptions on sharing a private residential address, posting pictures of private homes, tools for reporting privacy violations, and making a dedicated channel for doxing victims to respond.
Facebook’s New Doxing Policies
Facebook is one of the most controversial platforms since people use it not just for social networking, but also for stalking and doxing. As a consequence of such, the parent Meta has requested its Oversight Board last year to form some recommendations, that may make such practices safe on the platform. And the Board has listed 17 recommendations for Facebook, which Meta is not obliged to implement, but is supposed to respond to each of them. And it did today, announcing the implementation of some too. These include removing the exception of a current rule “that allowed users to post private residential information if it was ‘publicly available’ elsewhere”. Since the Board said there’s a significant difference in obtaining information from publicly available sources and from a social network, it should be considered ending. And, there’s a relaxation of a policy on sharing photos of the exterior of private homes. Meta said, “when the property depicted is the focus of the news story, except when shared in the context of organizing protests against the resident.” An example includes sharing the exterior photo of a house belonging to public personnel – like a government official of some high rank. Meta then revamped the way people find the reporting tools for privacy violations, by removing an extra menu to help them reach faster to this section. And at last, it disagreed on forming a special channel for the doxed victims to respond. It justified that it already has live chat support working on Facebook, which can be used by them for effective responses and solutions.
