Where is the profanity filter on facebook? When a public page administrator sets their profanity filter on Facebook, the system automatically hides comments that contain specific offensive words from people visiting the page. The system also creates a custom list of words that the page administrator can choose to block in order to further limit the content of their pages.
In a case brought by FIRE, a federal court ruled that the Arkansas State Police Department’s use of this feature violated First Amendment rights. The court’s decision centered around the police’s choice of wording for their profanity filter, which included slang terms like “pig” and “copper.” The court’s ruling also points to the need for additional protection for public colleges and universities that use these types of tools to censor content on their social media channels.
Facebook allows users to set their profanity filters on a per-page basis, with options for off, weak, medium, and strong. When a page administrator chooses to enable the profanity filter, it blocks words that have been reported by other users as being offensive. In the case of the State Police, they used a strong profanity filter in addition to a customized blacklist, which was not publicly disclosed.
While the profanity filter is a great option for public pages, many people use third-party tools to protect themselves from offensive language while browsing online or streaming movies and television shows. In fact, most streaming services allow users to add their own profanity keywords and can disable the built-in filter if it becomes too restrictive.