Facebook limits livestreaming ahead of tech summit in Paris

PARIS (AP) — Facebook toughened its livestreaming policies today as it prepared to huddle with world leaders and other tech CEOs in Paris to find ways to keep social media from being used to spread hate, organize extremist groups and broadcast terror attacks.

Facebook's move came hours before its executives would face the prime minister of New Zealand, where an attacker killed 51 people in March – and livestreamed parts of it on Facebook.

The CEOs and world leaders will try to agree on guidelines they will call the "Christchurch Call," named after the New Zealand city where the attack on a mosque took place.

Facebook said it's tightening up the rules for its livestreaming service with a "one strike" policy applied to a broader range of offenses. Any activity on the social network that violates its policies, such as sharing a terrorist group's statement without providing context, will result in the user immediately being temporarily blocked. The most serious offenses will result in a permanent ban.

Previously, the company took down posts that breached its community standards but only blocked users after repeated offenses.

The tougher restrictions will be gradually extended to other areas of the platform, starting with preventing users from creating Facebook ads.

Facebook said it's also investing $7.5 million in new research partnerships to improve image and video analysis technology aimed at finding content manipulated through editing to avoid detection by its automated systems – a problem the company encountered after the Christchurch shooting.

"Tackling these threats also requires technical innovation to stay ahead of the type of adversarial media manipulation we saw after Christchurch," Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, said in a blog post.