Civil Rights Report Card for Facebook

Laura Murphy was the first African American and first women to head the Washington D.C. Office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Laura recently worked with lawyers from the Washington Civil Rights law firm Relman Colfax to conduct a civil rights audit of Facebook. The audit was not just limited to racial justice but also included possible instances of discrimination in education, employment, as well as protected classes including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, national origin, religion, and age.

The audit was called for by civil rights organizations, advocates, and a few members of Congress. Facebook agreed to it and chose the auditors themselves.  Facebook was being taken to account for perceived failures during the 2016 Presidential elections and other failures to balance the safeguarding of free speech with hate, discrimination, and inequality.

The auditors began by interviewing over 100 civil rights organizations and members of Congress. The first preliminary audit report was release in 2018 with a second update in 2019. The focus of the audit was the Facebook app and no other Facebook products.

The audit found that civil rights organizations were most concerned about the failure of Facebook concerning race-based hate, voter suppression, advertising targeting and practices, and civil rights implications of privacy practices. Even with some noted positive changes at Facebook currently, the report found Facebook’s dealings regarding civil rights reactive and piecemeal. The report found it ironic that Facebook had no qualms about stopping anti-vaccination proponents and misinformation surrounding COVID-19 but was reluctant to take on board firm rules limiting misinformation regarding voting and voter suppression.

                Facebook Community Standards are what guides its decisions regarding posts. Here is the May 2020 Community Standards Enforcement Report.  The report only covers activity until March. Instagram was included in this report noting a concerning rise in Hateful Speech, Adult Nudity, Violence and Cyberbullying. Drug-related content surged during the months from January to March 2020. Despite improving tools and technology, Facebook estimates there are over 130 million fake profiles active on the platform. Also increasing is the number of governments seeking public data, which is concerning.

The ACLU audit’s primary concern is that Facebook do better during November’s 2020 Presidential election. The #StopHateforProfit and #HitPauseonHate campaigns’ ask advertisers to pause their ads on Facebook until it changes how the platform meets certain standards – establish a civil rights infrastructure, regular independent audits of identity-based hate and misinformation, find  remove groups focused on white supremacy, climate denialism, and antisemitism, to name only a few. 970 groups, advocates, and corporations such as The North Face, Verizon and Microsoft have joined the boycott. Facebook has met with the campaign organizers but no specific answers regarding the recommendations were clearly articulated.

Mark Zuckerberg owns a special class of shares that grant him 57% of the voting rights at board of directors meetings of the company = powerful. Moreover, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Neither, Zuckerberg’s power (and ignorance) nor hate speech’s protections can be viewed in isolation from our society and our own responsibilities. Assuredly, Facebook can do better and so can the rest of us.

At the end of the day more civil discourse and dialogue at all levels of each of our communities would go a long way toward improving things. My community is the California Community College system with its own struggle with Free Speech. I hope civil discourse is healthy enough to face #CancelCulture. There is a place for the social and societal pressure to act better that we are seeing  yielding positive change. However, we still need to be capable of standing in the same space with someone who does not believe the same things as us but we listen, learn, and rebut them if they are wrong.