Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit
with regular inputs from its voting rights consultants will allow it to identify new trends and developments
in how suppressive content appears on its platform, and continuously improve its overall detection and
enforcement strategy.
Even if Facebook’s proactive detection has improved in some ways, the Auditors remain concerned that
Facebook’s technology may not effectively anticipate and identify all forms of voter suppression that would be
in violation of its policies, especially forms that are new, unique, or do not follow the same patterns as 2018.
And, statistics on what percentage of content Facebook removed was initially flagged by proactive detection
technology, of course, do not indicate whether or how much content that actually violated Facebook’s policy
was not detected and therefore allowed to stay up. Further, because Facebook’s Voter Interference Policy has
expanded since 2018, the Auditors are concerned that some forms of content prohibited under the current
policy may be more nuanced and context-specific, making it more difficult to accurately detect with proactive
detection technology. Because online voter suppression and misinformation pose such a grave risk to elections,
the Auditors believe that it is insufficient and highly problematic to not send user reports of “voter interference”
content to human reviewers. The Auditors believe that not routing user reports to content reviewers likely
creates a critical gap in reporting for Facebook, a gap that is unreasonable for Facebook to expect can be filled
by reports from partner organizations (with other obligations and already limited resources), even if external
partners are experts in voter suppression.
(ii) Reporter Appeals. Facebook’s decision not to send user-reported voter interference content to human reviewers
has downstream effects on the ability of users to appeal reported content that is not taken down. In order for
content to be eligible for appeal it must first be reviewed by Facebook and given a formal determination as
to whether or not it violates Community Standards. As stated above, posts reported as potentially violating
Facebook’s Voter Interference Policy are treated as “user feedback” and are not formally assessed for violation
(unless the post is also detected as potentially violating by Facebook). Given the significant harm that can be
caused by voter interference content — including suppression and interference with users’ ability to exercise
their right to vote — the Auditors believe it is critical that there be a way to report and subsequently appeal
potential missed violations to further ensure that violating suppressive content gets taken down. Further, content
decisions that are unappealable cannot be appealed to the Oversight Board (for more details on the Oversight
Board, see the Content Moderation & Enforcement chapter) by users once it is operational. This makes it
impossible for election or census-related content to be reviewed by the Oversight Board, thereby excluding a
critically important category of content — one that can impact the very operation of our democratic processes.
The Auditors believe such exclusion is deeply problematic and must be changed.
7.
Increased Capacity to Combat Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior
The last report included an update on Facebook’s efforts to combat “information operations” or coordinated
inauthentic behavior, which are coordinated, deceptive efforts to manipulate or disrupt public debate, including
surrounding elections. The danger of such coordinated deceptive activity was illustrated in powerful detail in 2016,
when foreign actors engaged in coordinated, deceptive campaigns to influence the US election, including targeting
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