Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit
violating content and misinformation related to elections and the census, so teams can review and take
appropriate action. The company also works directly with election authorities to connect people with accurate
information about when and how to vote. Connecting people to accurate voting information is especially critical
in light of COVID-19’s impact on the 2020 election.
Facebook has provided each of these reporting partners (census protection groups, voting rights and election
protection groups, and state election officials) access to CrowdTangle, (a free social media monitoring
tool owned by Facebook) to help them quickly identify misinformation and voter and census interference
and suppression. CrowdTangle surfaces content from elected officials, government agencies, colleges and
universities, as well as local media and other public accounts. They have also created several public live
displays that anyone can use, for example, a display that shows what US presidential candidates are posting on
Facebook and Instagram in one dashboard. In addition to the 2020 presidential candidates, CrowdTangle allows
anyone to track what Senators, Representatives in the House and Governors are posting on both their official
and campaign Pages.
(iii) Expert Consultants and Training. In response to concerns that knowledge of civil rights, voting rights, the
census process, and forms of suppression and intimidation is critical to policy development and enforcement
strategies, Facebook agreed in 2019 to hire a voting rights consultant and a census consultant to provide
guidance and training to voting/census policy and ads teams, content review supervisors, and those on internal
escalation teams in advance of the census and 2020 elections. The training would cover topics such as the
history of voter/census suppression, examples of suppression, and Facebook’s voting and census policies and
escalation protocols. In addition to training, the consultants would provide guidance on policy gaps, surface
voting/census related concerns raised by external groups, and help advise the company in real time as tricky
voting/census-related questions are escalated internally.
Facebook has hired and onboarded Franita Tolson and Justin Levitt as expert voting rights consultants, and for
the company’s expert census consultant, it is working with Beth Lynk from the Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human Rights. Franita Tolson is a Professor at the USC Gould School of Law, and focuses on voting rights,
election law, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Justin Levitt served as Deputy Assistant Attorney
General for Civil Rights of the US Department of Justice, with voting rights as one of his primary areas of
focus. He is now a Professor at Loyola School of Law. Beth Lynk is the Census Counts Campaign Director at
the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
These three consultants have met with relevant internal teams and begun preparing trainings. Beth Lynk will
provide supplemental training and ongoing guidance as Facebook continues to enforce its census interference
policy. Franita Tolson is in the process of preparing a voting training, which will be delivered in July 2020.
Aside from preparing trainings, the consultants will provide voting-related guidance to Facebook on an ongoing
basis, including support for the Election Operations Center.
While the Auditors were disappointed that it took longer than anticipated to hire and onboard expert
consultants, the Auditors also acknowledge that the delay was due, in large part, to the fact that it took longer
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