Facebook Releases Guide to Help Prevent Abuse in Partnership with Domestic Violence Group

Facebook is looking to make a push to help prevent domestic abuse in the social media realm by teaming up with its safety advisory board to launch a new guide for survivors of such abuse. The main par...
Facebook Releases Guide to Help Prevent Abuse in Partnership with Domestic Violence Group
Written by Josh Wolford

Facebook is looking to make a push to help prevent domestic abuse in the social media realm by teaming up with its safety advisory board to launch a new guide for survivors of such abuse.

The main partnership here is with the National Network to End Domestic Violence, who is holding their inaugural tech summit. NNEDV sits alongside Childnet International, ConnectSafety.org, The Family Online Safety Institute, and WiredSafety on Facebook’s advisory board.

The guide, discusses managing friends, reviewing privacy settings, security settings & notifications, and reporting abuse.

“We believe that survivors have the right to experience and live online (and offline) safely. We sometimes hear that survivors should just“get offline” if they are concerned about an abuser finding them or contacting them. This is not a solution. Survivors shouldn’t have to live their lives avoiding every possible situation that the abusive person could misuse. They can’t control that person’s behavior and we should work to continuously hold abusers accountable for their actions,” says Cindy Southworth of NNEDV.

“Abusers go to devastating lengths to isolate their victims from family and friends. It is vital that survivors are able to safely rebuild those important connections, using Facebook and other social networks. Telling a victim to go offline to be safe is not only unacceptable, it further isolates her from people who love her. Our role, as advocates, professionals, friends, and family, is to make sure that survivors know the options to maintain their safety. That’s the empowering strategy – helping survivors take back the control that abusers have tried to steal from their lives.”

Abuse victims shouldn’t have to stay away from social media just because it can be a dangerous place – the reality is that they’re going to have Facebook accounts. Learning how to make those accounts as safe and private as possible is incredibly important.

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has made a push to help protect against abuse on the site. Last Fall, Facebook ramped up its anti-bullying initiative by launching an anti-bullying resource page as well as backing a national ad campaign. The National Network the End Domestic Violence was a part of that, too.

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