Moderators of groups, including airsoft groups, on Facebook will have their work cut out for them to make sure that their groups won’t get banned by social media giant. Yesterday, the company announced changes to its rules that will put new restrictions of groups and individuals that repeatedly violate its community policies.

One of the changes in rules is that the notifications to people who are about to join the group that it has Community Standards violations. The users will then decide if they will continue in joining the group or not.

We’ll start to let people know when they’re about to join a group that has Community Standards violations, so they can make a more informed decision before joining. We’ll limit invite notifications for these groups, so people are less likely to join. For existing members, we’ll reduce the distribution of that group’s content so that it’s shown lower in News Feed. We think these measures as a whole, along with demoting groups in recommendations, will make it harder to discover and engage with groups that break our rules.

We will also start requiring admins and moderators to temporarily approve all posts when that group has a substantial number of members who have violated our policies or were part of other groups that were removed for breaking our rules. This means that content won’t be shown to the wider group until an admin or moderator reviews and approves it. If an admin or moderator repeatedly approves content that breaks our rules, we’ll take the entire group down.

Members of groups who repeatedly violate policies will be prevented from posting or commenting in groups for a certain period of time. As to the number of days, it could be up to 30 days according to The Verge depending on the seriousness of the violation and that they would be unable to invite people to groups or even create a group.

Facebook will not recommend political and civic groups to users globally. This policy started before the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and now this policy will be made permanent.

Airsoft groups are always in the sights of Facebook especially when members start buying and selling airsoft guns over the years airsoft groups got banned and new airsoft groups (or reconstituted groups under a new name) have started policing members’ post to make sure that they do not violate community guidelines. With things getting tougher for groups, moderators and admins will have to be more on their toes when self-policing their groups.