Facebook has updated its community standards guidelines to provide “more detail and clarity” on the content it allows or bans on its service.

The social network stressed in a blog post that its policies are not changing, but that “we have heard from people that it would be helpful to provide more clarity and examples”.

Nudity, hate speech, self-harm, dangerous organisations, bullying and harassment, sexual violence and exploitation, criminal activity, violence and graphic content are among the areas covered by the updated guidelines.

Facebook’s definition of hate speech, for example, covers content that directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, sex, gender or gender identity, or serious disabilities or diseases.

“Sometimes people share content containing someone else’s hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others about that hate speech,” explain the revised guidelines.

“When this is the case, we expect people to clearly indicate their purpose, which helps us better understand why they shared that content. We allow humour, satire or social commentary related to these topics, but we may ask Page owners to associate their name and Profile with any content that is insensitive, even if that content does not violate our policies.”

In its blog post that announced the changes, Facebook’s Monika Bickert and Chris Sonderby admitted that keeping one global policy for hate speech remains “particularly challenging ... we know that our policies won’t perfectly address every piece of content, especially where we have limited context, but we evaluate reported content seriously and do our best to get it right.”

When it comes to nudity, Facebook apologises in its guidelines for policies that “can sometimes be more blunt than we would like and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes” due to its desire to maintain uniform policies across the world.

“We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks. We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures and other art that depicts nude figures.”

Breastfeeding has historically been an issue for Facebook, with protests about its censorship of breastfeeding photos in 2008, and then again in 2012.

At a time when organisations like Isis are making greater use of social media, Facebook’s clarified policy on dangerous organisations lays out what it bans: organisations engaged in terrorist activity, organised criminal activity, or promoting hate against people based on the same factors as its hate speech definition.

“We also remove content that expresses support for groups that are involved in the violent, criminal or hateful behaviour mentioned above. Supporting or praising leaders of those same organisations, or condoning their violent activities, is not allowed.”

When it comes to public figures, Facebook maintains that it allows “open and critical discussion” of celebrities and people featured in the news, while warning that it will remove “credible threats to public figures, as well as hate speech directed at them – just as we do for private individuals”.