Facebook-commissioned audit scorches company for civil rights setbacks

It’s probably not a good thing to hear that your company made decisions that “represent significant setbacks for civil rights.” But, that’s exactly what the commissioned by Facebook itself said about the company.

On Wednesday, Facebook released the results of a audit carried out by civil rights attorney Laura W. Murphy, along with the law firm Relman Colfax. The team conducted interviews with more than 100 civil rights organizations for the audit, resulting in a nearly 90-page report that does not paint a pretty picture for the social media company.

“While the audit process has been meaningful, and has led to some significant improvements in the platform, we have also watched the company make painful decisions over the last nine months with real world consequences that are serious setbacks for civil rights,” reads the report.

The audit makes mention of how, at the start of the process, there wasn’t any agreement to release the results publicly nor were Facebook’s executives “actively engaged” with the audit process. However, the report says Facebook executives did change their tune later in response to pressure from activists and became more involved. The report credits COO Sheryl Sandberg for developing relationships with civil rights leaders and transitioning into a “point person for this work.” 

The civil rights report does highlight some positive changes and advancements Facebook has made since the audit began in 2018. It commends the social network for its “robust census interference policy” designed to curb disinformation about the 2020 census. It also makes mention of specific platform changes such as Facebook’s ban of white supremacist and white nationalist content on the platform.

However, Facebook’s moves these past few months seem to have soured the auditors:

“This report outlines a number of positive and consequential steps that the company has taken, but at this point in history, the Auditors are concerned that those gains could be obscured by the vexing and heartbreaking decisions Facebook has made that represent significant setbacks for civil rights.” 

The report specifically mentions controversial Facebook posts published by President Donald Trump that the company let stand on its platform. 

Two of the Trump posts mentioned “facilitated voter suppression” says the report, a finding that’s in line with Trump’s repeated spread of misinformation on the legitimacy of mail-in ballots. Facebook its decision to keep those particular posts up, even though the report states that the civil rights auditors told the company they believed these posts broke the platform’s own policies. 

Another Facebook post the report singles out has to do with Trump’s threat to protesters in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. As Black Lives Matter protests spread throughout the country, the President of the United States warned that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The audit found that this post violated Facebook’s violence and hate speech policies. Yet, Facebook, again, let the post on the platform and its inaction. 

“These decisions exposed a major hole in Facebook’s understanding and application of civil rights,” states the report. It calls out Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, by pointing out that these policy decisions were made “at the highest level.”

From the scandal to campaigns, Facebook has faced a barrage of criticism for the role it played in the 2016 U.S. election. 

In order to address a few of the critiques being leveled at the company, Facebook commissioned two independent audits to investigate perceived anti-conservative bias and civil rights abuses. Results from the , which was led by former Republican Senator Jon Kyle, were shared last summer. The 8-page report did not find any evidence of bias against conservatives on the platform and its results were deemed inconclusive. 

Facebook’s perceived bias against conservatives was an issue that had dominated the news media, and one which the company to address. As a result, it hired Republicans to executive roles within the company and made other changes to the platform which have seen conservative-leaning Facebook publishers flourish on the social network ever since. One change the company made to appease conservatives even led to the demise of its trending news feature, which was the source of the perceived bias claims. The feature relied upon human content curators to promote popular links and topics on the website.

In contrast, the civil rights audit found that Facebook has failed to protect civil rights on a range of issues, from voter suppression to hate speech, all detailed in a report more than 10 times the size of the one exploring its perceived conservative bias.

Two years after the audit began, Facebook is now facing a massive advertiser boycott organized by civil rights groups over the issue of hate speech on the platform. Some of these organizations met recently with the company, a day before the audit was published, and have already publicly criticized the meeting, dismissing it as “nothing more than a PR exercise.” 

With the 2020 presidential election just months away, Facebook will need to take some real, substantial, perhaps even radical action to address its civil rights problems. That is, if Zuckerberg and company really want to.