SAN FRANCISCO — Auditors hand-picked by Facebook to examine its policies said that the company had not done enough to protect people on the platform from discriminatory posts and ads and that its decisions to leave up President Donald Trump’s inflammatory posts were “significant setbacks for civil rights.”
The 89-page audit put Facebook in an awkward position as the presidential campaign heats up. The report gave fuel to the company’s detractors, who said the site had allowed hate speech and misinformation to flourish. The audit also placed the social network in the spotlight for an issue it had worked hard to avoid since the 2016 election: that it may once again be negatively influencing American voters.
Now Facebook has to decide whether its approach to hateful speech and noxious content — which was to leave it alone in the name of free expression — remains tenable. And that decision puts pressure on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, who has repeatedly said that his company was not an arbiter of truth and that it would not police politicians’ posts.
“Many in the civil rights community have become disheartened, frustrated and angry after years of engagement where they implored the company to do more to advance equality and fight discrimination, while also safeguarding free expression,” wrote the auditors, Laura Murphy and Megan Cacace, who are civil rights experts and lawyers.
The audit, which was the culmination of 2 years of examination of the social network, was another signal of how power by the largest tech companies is increasingly under scrutiny. Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are all facing questions over how they are wielding their influence and what effects it has had. Later this month, the chief executives of all four companies are set to testify in front of Congress.
But the report was especially devastating for Facebook because its executives had pointed to it as a sign that the company was seriously grappling with the content of its site.
In the audit, Facebook was repeatedly faulted for prioritizing free expression on its platform over nondiscrimination and for not having a robust infrastructure to handle civil rights. The report homed in on three posts by Trump in May, which the audit said contained hateful and violent speech or which harmed voters. Facebook left those posts untouched, over objections by the auditors, the report said.
In doing so, the social network set a “terrible precedent” that others could copy and that could affect the November election, the report said. The move cheated the billions of other people who use Facebook out of equal treatment, giving powerful political leaders a special exemption to make false and divisive statements, it said.
“Facebook has made policy and enforcement choices that leave our election exposed to interference by the President and others who seek to use misinformation to sow confusion and suppress voting,” Murphy and Cacace wrote.
They added that they “would have liked to see the company go further to address civil rights concerns in a host of areas.”
In a post Wednesday about the audit, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said the report was “the beginning of the journey, not the end.” She added, “What has become increasingly clear is that we have a long way to go. As hard as it has been to have our shortcomings exposed by experts, it has undoubtedly been a really important process for our company.”
Sandberg said Facebook was already taking steps to address its shortcomings, including banning ads with fear-mongering statements and prohibiting the spread of disinformation around the 2020 census. The company said it would also hire more civil rights experts, create a role for a senior vice president of civil rights leadership and direct voters to a “voting information center” that has accurate information.
Facebook’s difficulties have been compounded by civil rights groups organizing a campaign, “Stop Hate for Profit,” to urge its advertisers to boycott the platform. More than 300 advertisers, including Coca-Cola and North Face, have agreed to pause their spending on the site.
On Tuesday, civil rights leaders met with Zuckerberg and Sandberg with 10 demands, including appointing a civil rights executive. But attendees said the Facebook executives did not agree to many of their requests and instead spouted “spin.” Zuckerberg said that while the company would make some changes to its processes, it would not do so because of external pressure or threat of financial loss, said one person who attended the meeting.
“I don’t know if Mark appreciates that hateful speech has harmful results and that Facebook groups have real-world consequences,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the leaders of the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign.
Civil rights groups including Free Press and Color of Change also met Wednesday with nearly 300 ad agency and brand marketing leaders about Facebook. In the session, they said the new audit report exposed holes in the company’s content policies and enforcement practices, according to attendees.
The audit “has laid bare what we already know: Facebook is a platform plagued by civil rights shortcomings,” said Vanita Gupta, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Facebook has an enormous impact on our civil rights — by facilitating hate speech and violence, voter and census disinformation, and algorithmic bias, and by shortchanging diversity and inclusion.”
In the report, the auditors credited Facebook for making progress on some issues over the past 2 years, including increasing the hiring of some in-house civil rights experts and creating an ad system that would no longer allow advertisers running housing, employment and credit ads in the United States to target users based on gender, age or ZIP code. Zuckerberg had also personally committed to building products that “advance racial justice,” the report said.
But Facebook had been too willing to let politicians out of abiding by its rules, allowing them to spread misinformation, harmful rhetoric and even calls to violence, the report said.
The auditors said their concerns had increased over the past 9 months because of decisions made by Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg, Facebook’s global head of policy and communications.
Last fall, Zuckerberg delivered a speech at Georgetown University about his commitment to protecting free speech at all costs. Since then, the report noted, Facebook had refused to take down inflammatory posts from Trump and had permitted untruthful political ads to be circulated.
“Elevating free expression is a good thing, but it should apply to everyone,” the auditors wrote. “When it means that powerful politicians do not have to abide by the same rules that everyone else does, a hierarchy of speech is created that privileges certain voices over less powerful voices.”
-The New York Times Company-
The assembly of a major Japanese city on Thursday passed an ordinance bill imposing criminal penalties for hate speech, a first for the country.
The new ordinance enacted in Kawasaki, near Tokyo, to enter into force on July 1, bans discriminatory language and actions against those from countries or regions other than Japan in public spaces. It makes repeat violations punishable by a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($4,600).
"Now we have an ordinance with great effectiveness that suits the local situation," said Kawasaki Mayor Norihiko Fukuda after the 60-seat assembly approved the bill.
While Japan enacted in 2016 a law designed to deter hate speech, the city deemed the law has not been effective in eradicating discrimination against ethnic minorities as it lacks provisions to ban or punish the use of discriminatory language.
The city which has a population of more than 1.5 million is home to one of the largest Korean communities in the greater Tokyo area. It seeks to effectively fight discrimination with the ordinance by giving specific examples of what it is trying to stamp out.
Actions specified include calling for minorities to be expelled from where they live, encouraging physical attacks against them and likening them to something other than human.
A civic group of Korean residents of Japan welcomed the ordinance, saying the ordinance clarified the responsibilities of inflicting pain through discrimination.
"Although I think it won't immediately eliminate discrimination and anti-foreign sentiment, they will eventually be gone once the sense that (hate speech) is a crime takes root," said 76-year-old Pae Jung Do.
Under the ordinance, the city can issue warnings to violators and orders to those found to be repeat offenders. If they do not adhere to the orders, the city can disclose their names and addresses and file criminal complaints against them.
Each step is taken after a hearing in front of a board of review, and the advisories and orders are limited to six months to address concerns regarding freedom of expression.
The enactment of the ordinance comes after Fukuda indicated in June that the city will introduce criminal punishments in order to strengthen measures to rein in hate speech.
Hate speech targeting ethnic minorities in Japan has included threats to kill people of certain nationalities and extreme insults or remarks.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube broadened its anti-harassment policies on Wednesday to include a ban on "implied" threats along with insults based on race, gender identity or sexual orientation.
"We will no longer allow content that maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation," global head of trust and safety Matt Halprin said in an online post.
"This applies to everyone, from private individuals, to YouTube creators, to public officials."
YouTube already bans explicit threats, but now "veiled or implied" threats will be barred as well, according to Halprin.
"This includes content simulating violence toward an individual or language suggesting physical violence may occur," Halprin said.
"No individual should be subject to harassment that suggests violence."
The changes stem in part from YouTube's July pledge to crack down on "creator-on-creator harassment," the Washington Post reported.
The platform was berated for leaving up videos from Steven Crowder, a right-wing commentator who regularly insulted gay Vox producer Carlos Maza based on his sexual orientation and Cuban heritage.
Maza's video montage of insults from Crowder over a period of years -- including "lispy sprite" and "angry little queer" -- went viral, prompting a YouTube investigation that concluded they didn't violate its hate speech policies.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON -- Facebook Inc quickly rejected a call from co-founder Chris Hughes on Thursday to split the world's largest social media company in three, while lawmakers urged the US Justice Department to launch an antitrust investigation.
Facebook has been under scrutiny from regulators around the world over data sharing practices as well as hate speech and misinformation on its networks. Some US lawmakers have pushed for action to break up big tech companies as well as federal privacy regulation.
"We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark's power is unprecedented and un-American," Hughes, a former college roommate of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in a lengthy New York Times opinion piece.
Facebook's social network has more than 2 billion users. It also owns WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than 1 billion people. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
Facebook rejected Hughes' call for WhatsApp and Instagram to be made into separate companies, and said the focus should instead be on regulating the internet. Zuckerberg will be in Paris on Friday to discuss internet regulation with French President Emmanuel Macron.
"Facebook accepts that with success comes accountability. But you don't enforce accountability by calling for the break up of a successful American company," Facebook spokesman Nick Clegg said in a statement.
"Accountability of tech companies can only be achieved through the painstaking introduction of new rules for the internet. That is exactly what Mark Zuckerberg has called for."
Late on Thursday, Senator Mike Crapo, the Republican who chairs the banking committee and Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat, asked Facebook to answer questions about a potential cryptocurrency-based payments system using its social network and its data collection.
The letter also asked questions about consumer privacy protections and if it had information about users' creditworthiness.
US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, told CNBC he thinks Facebook should be broken up and that the Justice Department's antitrust division needs to begin an investigation.
Antitrust law makes such a proposal tough to execute because the government would have to take the company to court and win. It is rare to break up a company but not unheard of, with Standard Oil and AT&T being the two biggest examples.
SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Hughes co-founded Facebook in 2004 at Harvard with Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. He left Facebook in 2007, and has said in a LinkedIn post he made half a billion dollars for his three years of work.
"It's been 15 years since I co-founded Facebook at Harvard, and I haven't worked at the company in a decade. But I feel a sense of anger and responsibility," Hughes said.
Facebook lost several executives after a bruising series of privacy and disinformation scandals since 2016. The founders of Instagram and WhatsApp have left, as has the executive who took over WhatsApp last year.
Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, who had been at the company for 13 years and was one of Zuckerberg's closest lieutenants, stepped down in March around the same time Facebook announced a pivot towards more private messaging.
He later cited "artistic differences" with Zuckerberg as his reason for leaving, without elaborating.
Critics say the company's pivot to privacy, which will introduce more encrypted communications, will restrict Facebook's ability to police propaganda, hate speech and other abusive behavior. Cox focused on improving tools to catch banned content in recent years.
Despite its scandals, the company's core business has proven resilient. Facebook has blown past earnings estimates in the past two quarters and its stock price barely budged in response to Hughes' opinion piece.
Hughes suggested Zuckerberg should be held responsible for privacy and other lapses at the company, echoing a call earlier this month by Democratic U.S. Senator Ron Wyden to hold the CEO individually liable for "repeated violations" of privacy.
"The government must hold Mark accountable. For too long, lawmakers have marveled at Facebook's explosive growth and overlooked their responsibility to ensure that Americans are protected and markets are competitive," Hughes said.
LAWMAKER PRESSURE
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election, has vowed to break up Facebook, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google if elected.
"Today's big tech companies have too much power—over our economy, our society, & our democracy. They've bulldozed competition, used our private info for profit, hurt small businesses & stifled innovation. It's time to #BreakUpBigTech," Warren said on Twitter on Thursday.
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said in a statement he agreed in retrospect that US regulators should not have approved Facebook's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp.
"The way forward is to heavily scrutinize future mergers and to ensure no company has anti-competitive platform privileges," Khanna said.
In one of a number of scandals to hit the company, Facebook is accused of inappropriately sharing information belonging to 87 million users with the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook has been in advanced talks with the US Federal Trade Commission to settle a year-old investigation and said last month it expected to spend between $3 billion and $5 billion.
On Monday, Republican and Democratic US senators criticized reported plans for the settlement, calling on the FTC to impose harsher penalties and more restrictions on Facebook's business practices.
Hughes said he last met with Zuckerberg in the summer of 2017, several months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke.
"Mark is a good, kind person. But I'm angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks," Hughes said.
Adam Mosseri, Facebook's previous head of news feed who recently took over Instagram, responded to Hughes on Twitter.
"Regulation is important and necessary, but I'm not convinced breaking us up is the right path. Would love to chat about it if you're open," Mosseri said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
BOSTON -- Thousands of people in Boston protested a "Free Speech" rally featuring right-wing speakers on Saturday, with hundreds of police mobilized to prevent a recurrence of violence that left a woman dead at a Virginia white-supremacist protest last week.
In historic Boston Common park alone, hundreds of protesters who believe the event could become a platform for racist propaganda dwarfed the few dozen rally participants.
The number of protesters was poised to swell exponentially as a march with thousands more people bore down on the park.
Some 500 police officers placed barricades to prevent vehicles from entering the park, the nation's oldest. To keep the two groups separate, they also built a cordon around the site of the rally.
Last weekend's clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one woman was killed in a car rampage after bloody street battles, ratcheted up racial tensions already inflamed by white supremacist groups marching more openly in rallies across the United States.
White nationalists had converged in the Southern university city to defend a statue of Robert E. Lee, who led the pro-slavery Confederacy's army during the Civil War, which ended in 1865.
A growing number of U.S. political leaders have called for the removal of statues honoring the Confederacy, with civil rights activists charging that they promote racism. Advocates of the statues contend they are a reminder of their heritage.
Duke University removed a statue of Lee from the entrance of a chapel on its Durham, North Carolina campus, officials said on Saturday.
Organizers of Saturday's rally in Boston have denounced the white supremacist message and violence of Charlottesville and said their event would be peaceful.
"The point of this is to have political speech from across the spectrum, conservative, libertarian, centrist," said Chris Hood, an 18-year-old Boston resident who stood among a crowd of a few dozen people who planned to join the Free Speech rally. "This is not about Nazis. If there were Nazis here, I'd be protesting against them."
Last weekend's violence sparked the biggest domestic crisis yet for U.S. President Donald Trump, who provoked ire across the political spectrum for not immediately condemning white nationalists and for praising "very fine people" on both sides of the fight.
Two male rally participants wearing Trump's red "Make America Great Again" campaign hats attempted to enter the protest pen that police had set up to keep the two sides separated. They were swarmed by black-clad protesters, some with their faces covered, as the crowd screamed "go home" and "no hate" at them.
Beyond the Boston rally and march, protests are also expected on Saturday in Texas, with the Houston chapter of Black Lives Matter holding a rally to remove a "Spirit of the Confederacy" monument from a park and civil rights activists in Dallas planning a rally against white supremacy.
Boston authorities had roadblocks in place to avert car attacks like the deadly one carried out in Charlottesville by a man said to have neo-Nazi sympathies against counter-protesters and a similar spate of attacks by Islamist extremists in Europe, most recently Barcelona.
PROTESTERS REJECT PLEA
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh had asked protesters to avoid Boston Common, saying their presence would draw more attention to the far-right activists. He joined the crowd of thousands assembling in Boston's historically black Roxbury neighborhood early on Saturday.
"These signs and the message so far this morning is all about love and peace," Walsh told reporters. "That's a good message."
Monica Cannon, an organizer of the "Fight White Supremacy" march, said it was a necessary move.
"Ignoring a problem has never solved it," Cannon said in a phone interview. "We cannot continue to ignore racism."
The Free Speech rally's scheduled speakers include Kyle Chapman, a California activist who was arrested at a Berkeley rally earlier this year that turned violent, and Joe Biggs, formerly of the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars.
Antonio Vargas, a 20-year-old student at Gordon College, joined the protest march.
"I believe in equality," Vargas said. "I believe race shouldn't define the pattern of your life or the result of your life.
"There also is a time to stand up and not be silent."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
