Time for the latest roll out of changes to Meta's flagship social media platform Facebook. Engagement continues to be the theme of Facebook’s feature updates, with the spotlight shining on Groups in particular.

Protecting intellectual property (IP) on social media is more of a concern than ever now that creators make so much profit on social platforms and it’s common for other users to copy and share popular content — accidentally or otherwise.

To combat this, Meta just announced a new IP Reporting API that’s designed to protect original content across Facebook and Instagram. It allows rights holders (a.k.a. the original content creators) to report content that they believe violates their intellectual property rights.

The new API was designed to be streamlined, integrating with the Graph API that allows users to easily fill out report forms.

Meta is also improving the Brand Rights Protection feature, which helps brands protect their content by identifying counterfeit products, copyright infringement, impersonation, and trademark violations. It can also be used to search for content that meets any of these criteria and report it accordingly with a request to have it removed. It’s accessible through the Business Manager.

New Brand Rights Protection features that have rolled out this year or are rolling out soon include:

• Automated takedowns for eligible brands, which allows brands with a strong reporting history to have reported content automatically be approved; ongoing audits will be conducted to ensure this feature isn’t abused.
• Allow lists, which allow brands to upload a list of accounts that are authorized to share their content.
• Automated recommendations, which enable Meta to automatically recommend commerce listings, Pages, accounts, and ads for brands to review based on previous reports, reference images, and allow lists.
• The ability to search and report Groups, Pages, profiles, accounts, and posts on both Instagram and Facebook.
• Increased search functionality, including searching by image on more types of content like posts, URLs, and IDs.
• A new Insights dashboard, which shows the past 90 days worth of actions taken from the reports you’ve submitted in the Brands Right Protection feature .

If you are a lover of Facebook Groups, you will also find some interesting new features rolling out or in development which include:

• Reels in Groups, which allow Group members to upload and share Reels within a Facebook Group.
• Facebook Event Sharing through Instagram, which allows Group administrators to share their Group’s Facebook Events to their Instagram account, expanding reach significantly across platforms.

And these are the new features currently in testing:

• Expanded Group profiles that will have more room for information in the “About” section and “open to messaging” tags that users can add to their profiles.
• The ability for admins to highlight top-contributing members and track engagement with a points system.
• A new “socializer” role for members, which recognizes members who help welcome new users to Group communities or who encourage participation.
• An Admin Assist feature, which streamlines Group administration and moderation tasks like handling false information; it will come with a daily digest report that will detail all automated actions taken.
• A Flagged by Facebook Override feature, which allows certain admins in specific Groups to override a Flagged by Facebook status on posts in the Group, especially content flagged as bullying or harassment.

These are significant quality control measures that will hopefully make Groups more engaging for users and easier to manage for admins. Facebook, or rather Meta always keep business owners on their feet with their regular rollouts of new features, this time around it is an addition rather than subtraction of features you love. If you struggle to stay up to date or just want some shiny expert advice on how to maximise your time optimising Facebook, why not chat with one of our Digital Coaches? Time is running out to use up your 2022 free coaching allocation, click here to make a date for your business with a Digital Ready Coach, coz when you stay digital ready, you don't have to get digital ready!