Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020)
Crime as Cognitive Constraint
from which to draw expected standards of corporate conduct. 165 The
UNGPs also refer to international criminal law. 166 Principle 13 cautions
companies against involvement in gross human rights abuses through
the conduct of human rights due diligence. 167 It also articulates the
different ways that corporations create a human rights impact – causing
or contributing to the impact, or being linked to the impact through its
product, operations or services. This applies to mass atrocity contexts,
including Facebook’s involvement in the spread of incitement in
Myanmar. It explains why in the (belated) human rights impact
assessment commissioned by Facebook in 2018, Business for Social
Responsibility (BSR) concluded that with respect to hate speech and
incitement to violence in Myanmar, Facebook is “directly linked to
them via the actions of users on its platform that violate Facebook’s
Community Standards.” 168 The finding tracks the language of the
UNGPs.
In the context of incitement to genocide, there are two relevant
regimes to guide platforms’ content moderation: international human
rights law and international criminal law. Both the FFM as well as the
UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression recommended the use
of international human rights law as basis for content moderation
policy. 169 Facebook’s revised “preamble” to its Community Standards
is a significant example of this application. In the words of Facebook:
“Our commitment to giving people voice remains paramount. We also
focus on authenticity, safety, privacy and dignity in writing and
enforcing our Community Standards.” 170 These competing values –
particularly voice and safety – somewhat resemble the structure of
165. UNGPs, supra note 14, at 13–14 (principle 12).
166. Id. at 8–10 (principle 7); id. at 14–15 (principle 13).
167. Id. at 14–15.
168. Business for Social Responsibility, Human Rights Impact Assessment:
Facebook
in
Myanmar,
at
35
(2018),
https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/bsr-facebookmyanmar-hria_final.pdf [hereinafter BSR Report]. Notably, the BSR
report, which identified potential adverse human rights impacts in
Myanmar, was commissioned after actual impacts had already occurred
and only published after the FFM had released its report.
169. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶ 1718; UN Human Rights
Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and
protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, U.N. Doc.
A/HRC/38/35 (April 6, 2018).
170. Monika Bickert, Updating the Values that Inform our Community
(Sept.
12,
2019),
Standards,
FACEBOOK
https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/updating-the-values-that-informour-community-standards/.
171