Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit Facebook’s events policy provides another illustration of the need for focused study and analysis on particular manifestations of hate. Facebook policy prohibits both calls to bring weapons to houses of worship (including mosques) and calls to bring weapons to other religious gatherings or events to intimidate or harass people. Civil rights groups have expressed ongoing concern that Facebook’s enforcement of its events policy is too slow, often pointing to an August 2019 incident in which efforts to organize intimidation at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convening in Houston, Texas took just over 24 hours to remove. Facebook agrees that 24 hours is too long and acknowledges that the Houston incident represents an enforcement misstep. Facebook should study the incident to pinpoint what went wrong and update protocols to ensure faster enforcement in the future. The Auditors believe having an effective expedited review process to remove such content quickly is critical given its potential for real-world harm, and that such post-incident analysis assessments are vital to that end. In the midst of nationwide protests, it is all the more important that Facebook get its events policy enforcement and expedited review process right — to ensure that people cannot use Facebook to organize calls to arms to harm or intimidate specific groups. For that reason, the Auditors recommend that Facebook gather data on its enforcement of its events policies to identify how long it takes Facebook to remove violating content (and whether those response times vary based on the type of content or group targeted). Those kinds of metrics can be critical to identifying patterns, gaps, or areas for improvement. Of course, the civil rights community’s concerns with hate on Facebook are not limited to anti-Muslim bigotry. And as we’ve seen with the COVID-19 pandemic and recent incidents of racism that have captured national (and international) attention, new manifestations and targets of hate speech can arise all the time, which, in the Auditors’ view, only reinforces the need to capture data so that new spikes and trends can be identified quickly and systematically. At bottom, the Auditors recommend that Facebook invest in further study and analysis of hate on the platform and commit to taking steps to address trends, policy gaps, or enforcement issues it identifies. It is important that Facebook understand how different groups are targeted for hate, how well Facebook is alerting content reviewers to the specific ways that violating content manifests against certain groups, to more quickly identify and remove attempts to organize events designed to intimidate and harass targeted groups, and where Facebook could focus its improvement efforts. For many forms of hate, including anti-Muslim bigotry, documenting and publicly acknowledging the issue is an important first step to studying the issue and building solutions. For that reason, the Auditors not only recommend that Facebook capture, analyze, and act on this data as described above, but that it also include in its Community Standards Enforcement Report more detailed information about the type of hate speech being reported and removed from the platform, including information on the groups being targeted. 58