Facebook is introducing new ways to filter out the trash in your life, otherwise known as horrible people. To combat harassment and bullying, the platform will give users tools to prevent unwanted friend requests and messages.
“We’ve heard stories from people who have blocked someone only to encounter the same harasser using a different account,” Facebook’s Global Head of Safety, Antigone Davis wrote in a blog post. “In order to help prevent those bad encounters, we are building on existing features that prevent fake and inauthentic accounts on Facebook.”
In other words, if you block some asshole and they create another account to keep messaging you, the new tools should be able to pick up that it’s the same person and continue to block them from contacting you. The tools will use signals like IP addresses to recognise these fake accounts.
“The person who blocked the original account is in control, and must initiate contact with the new account in order for them to interact normally,” Davis continued.
There’s also a new feature for the person who just can’t be fucked, allowing you to ignore conversations completely. When enabled, notifications from the conversation in question will be disabled and the thread will be moved into your filtered messages folder. In there, you can read the conversation without the sender knowing.
In other words, you won’t leave a ‘Seen’ in the chat, even though you definitely have seen it. This is only available for one-on-one messages right now, but Facebook says it’s coming to group messages soon.
The company said they worked closely with the National Network to End Domestic Violence and a number of experts across many fields to develop the safety tools.
It’s always great to see social media platforms give users the power to fight harassment and bullying. These features are another step in the right direction.
