In a blog post on Wednesday, October 13, Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, explained that the new decision is part of the update to the company’s bullying and harassment policies which accommodates coordinated harassment attacks against users. Davis explained that the changes were influenced by a deep understanding of the fact such attacks “..can weaponize a public figure’s appearance, which is unnecessary and often not related to the work these public figures represent.”

“Public figures — whether they’re politicians, journalists, celebrities or creators — use Facebook and Instagram to engage directly with their followers.

“We’re always trying to strike the right balance between protecting them from abuse and allowing open dialogue about them on our apps. Our bullying and harassment policy differentiates between public figures and private individuals to enable freedom of expression and legitimate public discourse around those in the public eye.”

Listed below are bans Facebook has imposed on its site: Severe sexualizing content
Profiles, Pages, groups, or events dedicated to sexualizing the public figure
Derogatory, sexualised photoshopped images and drawings
Attacks through negative physical descriptions that are tagged to, mention, or posted on the public figure’s account
Degrading content depicting individuals in the process of bodily functions

Davis also said, “In addition, we will remove unwanted sexualized commentary and repeated content which is sexually harassing. Because what is “unwanted” can be subjective, we’ll rely on additional context from the individual experiencing the abuse to take action.

“We made these changes because attacks like these can weaponize a public figure’s appearance, which is unnecessary and often not related to the work these public figures represent.”