Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit possible. Facebook’s failure to remove the Trump voting-related posts and close enforcement gaps seems to reflect a statement of values that protecting free expression is more important than other stated company values. Facebook’s decisions in May of 2020 to let stand on three posts by President Trump, have caused considerable alarm for the Auditors and the civil rights community. One post allowed the propagation of hate/violent speech and two facilitated voter suppression. In all three cases Facebook asserted that the posts did not violate its Community Standards. The Auditors vigorously made known our disagreement, as we believed that these posts clearly violated Facebook’s policies. These decisions exposed a major hole in Facebook’s understanding and application of civil rights. While these decisions were made ultimately at the highest level, we believe civil rights expertise was not sought and applied to the degree it should have been and the resulting decisions were devastating. Our fear was (and continues to be) that these decisions establish terrible precedent for others to emulate. The Auditors were not alone. The company’s decisions elicited uproar from civil rights leaders, elected officials and former and current staff of the company, forcing urgent dialogues within Facebook. Some civil rights groups are so frustrated that Facebook permitted these Trump posts (among other important issues such as removing hate speech), that they have organized in an effort to enlist advertisers to boycott Facebook. Worse, some civil rights groups have, at this writing, threatened to walk away from future meetings with Facebook. While Facebook has built a robust mechanism to actively root out foreign actors running coordinated campaigns to interfere with America’s democratic processes, 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. Specifically, we have grave concerns that the combination of the company’s decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking and the precedents set by its recent decisions on President Trump’s posts, leaves the door open for the platform to be used by other politicians to interfere with voting. If politicians are free to mislead people about official voting methods (by labeling ballots illegal or making other misleading statements that go unchecked, for example) and are allowed to use not-so-subtle dog whistles with impunity to incite violence against groups advocating for racial justice, this does not bode well for the hostile voting environment that can be facilitated by Facebook in the United States. We are concerned that politicians, and any other user for that matter, will capitalize on the policy gaps made apparent by the president’s posts and target particular communities to suppress the votes of groups based on their race or other characteristics. With only months left before a major election, this is deeply troublesome as misinformation, sowing racial division and calls for violence near elections can do great damage to our democracy. Nonetheless, there has also been positive movement in reaction to the uproar. On June 5, 2020, Mark Zuckerberg committed to building products to advance racial justice, and promised that Facebook would reconsider a number of existing Community Standards, including how the company treats content dealing with voter suppression and potential incitement of violence. He also promised to create a voting hub to encourage greater participation in the November 2020 elections, and provide access to more authoritative voting information. 10