Facebook launches new tools to prevent harassment

SAN FRANCISCO — US social media giant Facebook announced that it has rolled out new tools to protect its users from harassment or unwanted contact from other people.

Antigone Davis, global head of safety at Facebook, said in a post on the company's official website that Facebook is introducing new features that can detect and prevent unwanted contact like friend requests and messages from blocked users who may make a second attempt by setting up a new account.

These features are useful to women and journalists who often experience harassment disproportionately, he said.

With the new features, Facebook users can ignore a Messenger conversation that will be automatically moved out of the inbox, without having to block the sender, Davis said.

"These automated features help us identify fake accounts more quickly and block millions of them at registration every day," he noted.

He said Facebook has been making constant efforts to build a safe community where "people can control what they share, who they share it with, and who can communicate with them."

Facebook also offers special help to survivors of domestic violence who may suffer additional harassment, particularly offline, by blocking the abusers.

The new tools will disable notifications and move the unsolicited conversation from their inbox to a Filtered Messages folder, or they can read messages in the conversation without the notice of the sender, he said.

Facebook users hope that these new tools will help them feel safer on the Facebook website.