Facebook on Tuesday launched new tools aimed at preventing harassment on its website and the messenger application. The new feautures are based on feedback from groups which experience the most harassment – including women and journalists, the company said.
The new options “recognise and help prevent unwanted contact like friend requests and messages” when a person you blocked sets up a new account or tries to contact you from another account, the statement said. The tools also allow users to ignore a conversation on messenger and move it out of the inbox without having to block the sender.
Facebook’s automated features allow it to identify fake accounts quicker than earlier, and block “millions” of them every day, the social media giant said. However, sometimes fake accounts manage to slip through these checks, it added.
The company is now using various “signals” – like IP addresses – to identify the fake accounts and prevent its users from adding or sending messages to people who have blocked the previous accounts. The person who blocked the previous account must initiate a conversation with the new account in order for them to interact normally.
The new Facebook features also allow users to tap on a message to ignore a conversation. Once this is done, the conversation moves to the “filtered messages” folder, without the need to block the perpetrator. The user can also read messages in the conversation without the sender knowing they have been read. The social media company said it installed this feature because of reports of perpetrators approaching their victims offline after being blocked on Facebook.
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