The cost of keeping social media sites in check

Facebook has a new set of “community standards” — the rules governing what you can and cannot do on the platform. It’s nearly three times as long as the previous version thanks to more detail about, for example, what kind of nude photos are acceptable. 

Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the New America Foundation’s Ranking Digital Rights project, says it’s in part a reaction to criticism that Facebook has clamped down too much on free speech, from photographs to pseudonyms of anonymous protesters. 

Twitter, in contrast, has taken flak for being too permissive of bullying.

“Twitter is a much easier place to kind of drop in, drop a little bomb, and go away,” says Fatemeh Khatibloo, analyst at Forrester.

Jonathon Morgan, a data scientist who co-authored a report on the use of Twitter by the terrorist group ISIS, says the difference between the two social networks’ approach to free speech is more about being different products than having different philosophies.