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Facebook's New Anti Bullying Tool Promises To Reduce Online Harassment

Facebook is making efforts to prevent the ever concerning issue of online harassment.
Stefanie Loos / Reuters

Facebook on Monday unveiled a new tool to combat online harassment and bullying, revamping its Facebook safety center with advice on how users can better protect themselves online.

The ' Bullying Prevention Hub' provides bullying victims with information on what they can do when they see harassing content and provide recommendations to those who want to help.

The refreshed safety center, which can be accessed through the phone or the web, is now available in 50 languages across the world as a result of this move.

Instagram is also making similar efforts towards protection of its users by launching a suicide prevention tool recently. Meanwhile, its parent company is working with nearly 60 partners to make its Facebook experience safer for users.

The Bullying Prevention Hub was originally launched in 2013, created in partnership with the Yale Center For Emotional Intelligence. It offers tools to help people stand up for each other when they see bullying behavior, both online and offline, with contextual education, scripts, and other information.

The hub is directly linked with Facebook reporting so when a user reports something, he or she is redirected to the safety center.

Facebook

"We recognize the role we have to play in helping to create a safe and respectful community for the 1.7 billion people who use our site. We also recognize that bullying and harassment will likely always exist and we are committed to working with governments, civil society organizations, safety advocates and experts and our community on the issue," Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director, Facebook- India, South & Central Asia told HuffPost India in an email.

"Our approach to helping keep people safe on our services is to have policies that expressly prohibit bullying and harassment, tools that allow people to report content to us and to create a safe space, and we then undertake education campaigns to promote awareness about how to stay safe online," she added.

In India political discussions often take place on Facebook pages and often things get heated. Regarding that Das said that given the diversity of the Facebook community sometimes people share information that is controversial or offends others. That's why there is a set of global Community Standards that explain what you can and cannot do on Facebook.

"We also encourage people to be respectful and give people control. We make it easy for people to decide who can see the content that they share, so they can choose their audience when sharing something that may be controversial. we listen to our community and work with safety advocates all over the world to understand how our services are being used," she added.

Recently, Disney and some other investors reportedly backed out because of Twitter's image of not being able to handle online harassment. Last week, Facebook also launched a guide for women to avoid digital harassment.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.