Authenticity is the cornerstone of our community. We believe that authenticity helps create a community where people are accountable to each other, and to Facebook, in meaningful ways. We want to allow for the range of diverse ways that identity is expressed across our global community, while also preventing impersonation and identity misrepresentation. That's why we require people to connect on Facebook using the name that they go by in everyday life. Our Authenticity Policies are intended to create a safe environment where people can trust and hold one another accountable.
In order to maintain a safe environment and empower free expression, we also remove accounts that are harmful to the community, including those that compromise the security of other accounts and our services. We have built a combination of automated and manual systems to block and remove accounts that are used to persistently or egregiously abuse our Community Standards.
Because account-level removal is a harsh severe action, whenever possible, we aim to give our community a chance to learn our rules and follow our Community Standards. Penalties, including account disables, are designed to be proportionate to the severity of the violation and the risk of harm posed to the community. Continued violations, despite repeated warnings and restrictions, or violations that pose severe safety risks, will lead to an account being disabled.
We do not allow the use of our services and will restrict or disable accounts or other entities (such as pages, groups and events) if you:
• Severely violate our Community Standards.
• Persistently violate our Community Standards.
• Coordinate as part of a network of accounts or other entities in order to violate or evade our Community Standards.
• Represent dangerous individuals or organisations.
• Create or use an account that demonstrates intent to violate our Community Standards.
• Create an account, Page, group or event to evade our enforcement actions, including creating an account to bypass a restriction or after we have disabled your previous account, Page, group or event.
• Impersonate others by:
• Using their photos with the explicit aim to deceive others.
• Creating an account assuming to be or speak for another person or entity.
• Creating a Page assuming to be or speak for another person or entity for whom the user is not authorised to do so.
• Are under 13 years old.
• Are a convicted sex offender.
• Are prohibited from receiving our products, services or software under applicable laws.
In certain cases, such as those outlined below, we will seek further information about an account before taking actions ranging from temporarily restricting accounts to permanently disabling them.
• Accounts misrepresenting their identity (Facebook and Messenger only) by:
• Using a name that is not the authentic name you go by in everyday life
• Using an inherently violating name containing slurs or any other violations of the Community Standards
• Providing a false date of birth.
• Creating a single account that represents or is used by more than one person.
• Maintaining multiple accounts as a single user.
• Compromised accounts.
• Empty accounts with prolonged dormancy.