{"id":1193759,"date":"2023-10-18T14:31:05","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T18:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1193759"},"modified":"2023-10-18T14:31:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T18:31:05","slug":"meta-is-temporarily-changing-facebook-comment-settings-amid-israel-hamas-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1193759","title":{"rendered":"Meta is temporarily changing Facebook comment settings amid Israel-Hamas war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meta is temporarily changing users\u2019 default comment settings on Facebook as part of its response to the Israel-Hamas war. The company said in <a data-i13n=\"cpos:1;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/about.fb.com\/news\/2023\/10\/metas-efforts-regarding-israel-hamas-war\/\">an update<\/a> it was making the change in an effort to \u201cprotect people in the region from potentially unwelcome or unwanted comments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With the change, comments on \u201cnewly created public Facebook posts\u201d will be limited to the user\u2019s friends or \u201cestablished followers.\u201d The step is somewhat unusual as publicly viewable Facebook posts are typically open to comments from anyone by default. Meta didn\u2019t specify the location or how many Facebook accounts would be affected by the change, but said it would apply broadly to \u201cpeople in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"end-legacy-contents\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The company added that all Facebook users have the ability to limit their comments, regardless of their location, and that it would notify users for whom the setting was now enabled by default. Additionally, Meta said it\u2019s making it easier for Facebook users to bulk delete comments and that it\u2019s \u201cdisabled the feature that normally displays the first one or two comments under posts in Feed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The updates appear to be meant to reduce harassment and potentially toxic comments as tensions surrounding the conflict continue to <a data-i13n=\"cpos:2;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/10\/14\/tech\/social-media-misinformation-israel-hamas\/index.html\"><ins>spill over<\/ins><\/a> onto social media. Meta also said it\u2019s rolling out its profile \u201clock\u201d tool to Facebook users \u201cin the region.\u201d The <a data-i13n=\"cpos:3;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/help\/196419427651178\"><ins>feature<\/ins><\/a> allows users to hide some previously-public parts of their profile and prevents non-friends from seeing a full-size version of their profile photos.<\/p>\n<p>The company also addressed claims that their content moderation practices have unfairly suppressed some accounts posting about the conflict. Over the weekend a number of <a data-i13n=\"cpos:4;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/10\/16\/world\/middleeast\/israel-hamas-war-social-media.html\"><ins>users reported<\/ins><\/a> that they believed they had been <a data-i13n=\"cpos:5;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/mashable.com\/article\/instagram-shadowbanning-censor-israel-palestine\"><ins>\u201cshadowbanned\u201d<\/ins><\/a> on Instagram for posting content about conditions in Gaza or otherwise calling attention to how the ongoing conflict is affecting Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company had <a data-i13n=\"cpos:6;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/andymstone\/status\/1713603196080328741\"><ins>discovered<\/ins><\/a> and fixed a \u201cbug\u201d that affected the visibility of Stories and other re-shared posts \u201cglobally.\u201d  On Wednesday, the company confirmed the issues had \u201csignificantly reduced\u201d the reach of Stories. \u201cThis bug affected accounts equally around the globe \u2013 not only people trying to post about what\u2019s happening in Israel and Gaza \u2013 and it had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content,\u201d Meta said. Separately, the company also fixed another \u201cglobal issue\u201d that prevented users from livestreaming on Facebook \u201cfor a short time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not the first time questions have been raised about Meta\u2019s response to a conflict between Israel and Hamas. In May of 2021, the last time there was a major escalation violence in the Gaza Strip, Facebook\u2019s moderation practices violated Palestinians\u2019 right to free expression, a report <a data-i13n=\"cpos:7;pos:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/facebook-meta-palestine-free-speech-bsr-report-190534575.html\"><ins>commissioned by<\/ins><\/a> Meta found. The report found that Meta\u2019s systems and content reviewers had a lower accuracy rate when evaluating posts written in Palestinian Arabic, which resulted in a significant number of users being hit with \u201cfalse strikes\u201d on their accounts.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/meta-is-temporarily-changing-facebook-comment-settings-amid-israel-hamas-war-183105130.html?src=rss&#013;<br \/>\n&#013;<br \/>\nSource: Engadget &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/meta-is-temporarily-changing-facebook-comment-settings-amid-israel-hamas-war-183105130.html?src=rss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meta is temporarily changing Facebook comment settings amid Israel-Hamas war<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meta is temporarily changing users\u2019 default comment settings on Facebook as part of its response to the Israel-Hamas war. The company said in an update it was making the change in an effort to \u201cprotect people in the region from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1193759\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,110],"tags":[98],"class_list":["post-1193759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engadget","category-unfiltered-rss","tag-engadget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1193759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1193759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1193759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1193759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}