We recognize how important it is for Facebook to be a place where people feel empowered to communicate and we take our role in keeping abuse off our services seriously. That’s why we have developed a set of public Community Standards that outline what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook.

The goal of our Community Standards is to encourage expression and create a safe environment. We base our policies on input from our community and from experts and organizations outside Facebook so we can better understand different perspectives on safety and expression, as well as the impact of our policies on different communities globally.

Based on this feedback, as well as changes in social norms and language, our standards evolve over time.

Every two weeks, members of our Product Policy team, who sit in 11 offices around the world, run a meeting called the Product Policy Forum to discuss potential changes to our Community Standards, ads policies and major News Feed ranking changes. A variety of subject matter experts participate in this meeting, including members of our safety and cybersecurity policy teams, counterterrorism specialists, Community Operations employees, product managers, public policy leads and representatives from our legal, communications and diversity teams.

The team typically gives two types of presentations at the meeting: a heads up or a policy recommendation. A heads up is a short presentation that introduces an issue the Product Policy team plans to work through with internal and external input. After the team has received input, analyzed relevant data about the issue, and prepared options for updating or changing a policy, subject matter experts will present a recommendation so the larger group can discuss it.

After each Product Policy Forum, we will publish meeting minutes in our Transparency Center. All of our policies, including the Community Standards, can also be found in the Transparency Center. (Updated on January 26, 2022 at 11:40 AM PT to reflect the new location of these minutes.)