Facebook Restricts Live Streaming

Facebook has announced new restrictions on live-streaming videos that will prevent users who break their rules from using Facebook Live for a set period of time. The company said it was looking to prevent its services from being used to 'causeharm or spread hate' following March's attacks in New Zealand, few months ago,which were broadcast on the platform. Similar restrictions will be rolled out in the coming weeks to restrict offenders from taking out ads, the social media network said.

This applies to content posted elsewhere on the website, notjust streamed on Face book Live. If a user were to post a harmful link on their profile, like content which leads to a terrorist website, they would be banned from live-streaming as well.

'Our goal is to minimize risk of abuse on Live while enabling people to use Live in a positive way every day,' Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity said in a blog post.

Rosen said that Facebook hopes to expand these restrictions to other parts of the platform in the future. Soon, these same users whoviolate Facebook's Community Standards will be banned from creating ads aswell.

The social giants must also promise to re-evaluate theiralgorithms that direct users to extremist content, and commit to redirecting people looking for extremist material. Instagram has deployed that measure tohelp users searching images of self-harm. Under the agreement, governments must make a range of promises, including adopting and enforcing laws that ban objectionable content-as New Zealand did in the wake of the attacks bymaking the possession or sharing of the gunman's video a crime-and setting guidelines on how traditional media outlets can report terrorism without amplifying it