Facebook has lifted a ban on beheading videos, establishing a policy that allows the graphic videos to remain on the site so long as they are not celebrated by the people posting them.
The social network, which allows anyone 13 and older to become a member, issued a temporary ban on the beheading videos in May, following complaints from the Family Online Safety Institute. Under the new policy, images that “glorify violence” as well as those depicting a woman’s “fully exposed breast” will still be banned, the BBC reports. Beheading videos—many of those in circulation online are staged—are still viewable elsewhere on the Internet, including Google’s YouTube, but critics fear that making them accessible on Facebook to younger users increases the likelihood that teens will encounter psychologically scarring images.
[BBC]