Facebook utilises the crowd

Facebook has taken a step towards dealing with some of the more controversial issues associated with the site by creating a ‘Community Council’ to review content considered ‘inappropriate’.

The Facebook Community Council is a new app which encourages members to review content which has been flagged by users.

Membership to the council is currently by invite only.

When a Facebook page is flagged for review by a concerned user, Community Council members are invited to look at the page and give their opinion of the content.

The application gives the council member eight options for dealing with flagged content: acceptable, skip, spam, non English, nudity, drugs, attacking and violence.

The results are then averaged out to establish a consensus as to what is, and is not, acceptable Facebook content in the minds of council members.

“The Facebook Community Council is a way for users to tell us whether reported content violates our policies,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

“We’ve found that people aren’t shy about reporting content they come across that looks suspicious, and this is just another way of leveraging the Facebook community to help maintain the site’s trusted environment.  It’s still in an experimental stage, and we’re currently testing the application with only a very small number of users.”