Meta Wants to Save Businesses From Abusive, Spammy Reviews

pcmag.com:

Meta has introduced a new Community Feedback Policy in a bid to make reviews on Facebook and Instagram more relevant to consumers and less frustrating to business owners.

"The new policy was created to ensure that reviews are based on real purchasing experiences," Meta says(Opens in a new window), "and to keep irrelevant, fraudulent and offensive feedback off of our platforms."

The new Community Feedback Policy applies to five different aspects of reviews: Manipulation, Incentivization, Irrelevance, Graphic or Inappropriate Content, and Spam. (The latter two of which also run afoul of other Meta policies regarding what's allowed on its platforms.)

"We have always taken action against irrelevant community feedback, manipulated reviews and other Community Feedback Policy violations," Meta says, "but are now establishing policies to provide clearer guidelines on what types of community feedback are allowed."

The company says potential violations of this policy will be judged based on a combination of manual review and machine learning. That approach has its benefits—especially since Meta says more than 200 million businesses use its platforms—but it also has some consequences.

"When we launch a new policy," Meta says, "it can take time for the various parts of our enforcement mechanisms to learn how to correctly and consistently enforce the new standard."

Enforcement of the Community Feedback Policy is supposed to improve with time, Meta says, especially as it trains its machine learning models based on feedback from ordinary Facebook and Instagram users as well as businesses using those platforms to reach their customers.

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