Facebook’s Civil Rights Audit of intimidation designed to discourage participation. Facebook has also engaged a census expert who consults with and trains policy, product, and operations teams responsible for enforcing against census suppression. • Taking steps to build greater civil rights awareness and accountability across the company on a long-term basis. Facebook has acknowledged that no one on its senior leadership team has expertise in civil rights. Thus, the Auditors are heartened that Facebook has committed to hiring an executive at the VP level to lead its work on civil rights. This person will have expertise in civil rights law and policy and will be empowered to develop processes for identifying and addressing civil rights risks before products and policies are launched. The Civil Rights VP will have dedicated program management support and will work to build out a long-term civil rights infrastructure and team. The company also committed to developing and launching civil rights training for several groups of employees, including the Civil Rights Task Force, which is made up of senior leadership across key verticals in the company. These commitments must be approached with urgency. • Improved Appeals and Penalties process. Facebook adopted several procedural and transparency changes to how people are penalized for what they post on Facebook. For example, the company has introduced an “account status” feature that allows users to view prior Community Standards violations, including which Community Standard was violated, as well as an explanation of restrictions imposed on their account and details on when the restrictions will expire. • More frequent consultations with civil rights leaders. Facebook leadership and staff has more consistently engaged with leaders in the civil rights community and sought their feedback, especially in the voting and census space. • Changing various content moderation practices, including an expanded policy that bans explicit praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism, and a new policy that prohibits content encouraging or calling for the harassment of others, which was a top concern of activists who are often targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns. Facebook also launched a series of pilots to combat hate speech enforcement errors, a well-documented source of frustration for activists and other users who condemn hate speech and violence to be incorrectly kicked off the platform. • Taking meaningful steps to create a more diverse and inclusive senior leadership team and culture. It has, for example, elevated the role of the Chief Diversity Officer to report directly to the Chief Operating Officer and to play an active role in key executive decision meetings — a­ nd to increase the number of leadership positions held by people of color by 30%, including 30% more Black people, over the next five years. • Investing in diverse businesses and vendors. Facebook has made commitments to partner with minority vendors and has made more funding available for minority businesses and social justice groups, including a recent announcement that it will spend at least $100 million annually with Black-owned suppliers. This is part of the company’s effort to double annual spending with US companies certified as minority, women, veteran, LGBTQ, or disabled-owned suppliers to $1 billion by the end of 2021. Facebook has also committed to 7