Experts from some of the nation’s leading civil and digital rights organizations say a report released by Meta last week, billed as a comprehensive review of its impact on human rights, actually offers “zero” insight into its true impact. in the world. Meta’s first Human Rights Report should be seen, experts said, as just the latest in a long line of efforts by the company to erase a history of inciting hatred, violence and extremism around the world, the product of an unrelenting quest for greater engagement and profit. “Let’s be absolutely clear: This is just a long PR product with the words ‘Human Rights Report’ printed on the side,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit focused on countering misinformation. The 83-page document, released on July 14, offers a window into Meta’s philosophy on human rights across its platforms, as authored by Human Rights Director Miranda Sissons and Human Rights Product Policy Officer Iain Levine. former Human Rights leader. I’m watching. The report aims to take stock of potential human rights concerns about the company’s policies, products and business model, as well as respond to critics who have repeatedly slammed Meta for encouraging hate and harm. Meta’s report analyzes its approach to thorny issues such as government takedown requests and end-to-end encryption and summarizes its impact on civil rights in several countries. But rights groups analyzing the document say it’s not a reckoning with the real-world suffering caused by Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s other products. Instead, pundits described the project as largely self-plagiarized, recycling past public relations statements while citing them as evidence of progress on a number of important issues. A section on “Election Integrity,” for example, which boasts of Metta’s efforts to “better protect elections” and “empower people to vote,” contains links to seven external documents — all from Metta itself . However, the report fails to mention that many of the safeguards it promotes no longer apply. “The whole document is corporate propaganda masquerading as honest self-reflection,” Lehrich added, saying the company’s guide to responding to criticism has not changed since its inception. “The question is not whether Mark Zuckerberg will have a sudden moral awakening one of these days, but when policymakers will hold the tech giants to real accountability.” G/O Media may receive a commission Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on expert assessments of its report. Protesters hide behind makeshift shields as they confront police during a crackdown on anti-coup protests in Yangon on March 16, 2021Photo: STR (Getty Images) Meta has historically struggled to maintain its presence in the United States while operating in many countries that have often been found to violate human rights, as have many of its competitors such as Google and Twitter. Company whistleblower Francis Haugen alleged under oath last fall that Meta was “literally encouraging ethnic violence” in countries like Ethiopia. Last week’s report seeks — and fails — to address the contradiction, rights groups told Gizmodo. “Facebook’s Human Rights Assessment Report is 83 pages of self-promotion and repeats promises the company has already made but failed to keep. There are no pages in the report with information on the actual human rights impact, recognition or remorse for its role in atrocities around the world, or how it plans to fully implement policies, including non-English language,” said Wendy Via, co-founder. and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “How could a company the size of Meta adequately talk about what it does in 83 pages?” Meta repeatedly points to its renewed emphasis on encryption and efforts to limit unnecessary government takedown requests as key examples of its commitment to human rights. It claims it only responds to requests for user information that are “in accordance with internationally recognized human rights standards” and says it is willing to respond to overly large requests that violate internal policies or local laws. But some experts said Meta’s approach fails to fully address the core problems driving government data requests. Meta’s hunger for ever narrower levels of personal data—the fuel for its sole source of revenue, advertising—is what always attracts governments interested in abusing access to its records, said Isedua Oribhabor, chief operating officer and human rights in the non-profit organization. Access now. “The more products and services the company has and the more ways it has to collect data, that’s just more fodder for governments to keep trying to access it,” he said. Meta could demonstrate its commitment to user privacy more clearly, Oribhabor added, by collecting only the minimum amount of data necessary to operate the services it provides. Some experts said they had grown disillusioned with Meta’s ever-longer list of transparency reports, describing these documents as initially useful but ultimately lacking in impact and self-policing. Whether referring to widely viewed content or government requests for user data, Meta’s efforts at accountability are belied by a clear motivation to present the company’s rosier image, rights groups said. In 2018, the United Nations’ top human rights commissioner said the company’s response to evidence that it was fueling the state’s genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar was “slow and ineffective.” The following year, UN researcher Christopher Sidoti told Gizmodo that while Meta had made some “substantial” changes, the company’s response to the findings remained “almost inadequate.” The United Nations did not comment on the Meta Human Rights Report published last week. About a dozen pages of the report are devoted to assessing Meta’s impact in countries such as Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and India—areas all with significant political unrest in recent years. Meta claims its assessments provide a “detailed, direct form of human rights due diligence,” allowing it and other companies to “identify potential human rights risks and impacts” and “promote human rights” while pursuing “to prevent and mitigate risks.” Ostensibly, Meta expected these summaries to serve as an example of transparent disclosure, but experts don’t see it that way. Many rights groups described the sections as short, biased interpretations of previous reports that failed to accurately capture Meta’s destabilizing role in these areas. Instead of digging deep into the “prominent human rights risks” of the countries named, the document seems aimed at leaving readers with the impression that the previous issues have already been adequately addressed, Oribhador said. Meta fails, Oribhabor explained, “to take the extra step needed to make the connection that because it is the primary platform for communication, it is also the primary platform for spreading hate and incitement to violence.” An ad from WhatsApp is displayed on a newspaper on a stall in New Delhi on January 13, 2021Photo: Sajjad Hussain (Getty Images) Even before the report, Meta was facing fresh criticism from citizen and digital rights groups from around the world, particularly those in Eastern Europe, India and Kenya. A much more detailed report on its impact, compiled by the Global Program Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) last year, accused Metta of having a “tremendously devastating effect on democracies, societies and vulnerable populations around the world”. , saying bigoted populist leaders and far-right political parties had harnessed their technology to achieve “political heights that were probably previously unattainable.” Unlike Meta, GPAHE relied heavily on multiple independent regional sources to reach its conclusions. One such Belgrade-based NGO, the SHARE Foundation, claimed that companies like Meta have “simply no incentive” to invest in hosting content in regions with “relatively small language groups” like Serbia. The GPAHE report further highlighted Facebook’s role in the election of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose party has fueled religious fanaticism in the country and ignored violence against India’s minority Muslim population. Human rights issues in India represent the biggest controversy surrounding Meta’s analysis of its impact. The Real Facebook Oversight Board, an oversight body made up of global experts working to hold Meta to account, accused the company of “whitewashing religious violence fueled in India on their platforms,” saying that while Meta had promised to consult with civil society groups before publishing last week’s report, many “had no notice of this report or any information”. There is indeed an independent assessment of Meta’s role in India, one commissioned by the company itself. However, no one outside the Meta has seen it yet. Experts have strongly criticized Meta’s failure to reveal a long-overdue assessment of his role in spreading hate speech and inciting violence in the country. Facebook hired Foley Hoag, an outside law firm, to conduct the assessment in 2020. The law firm reportedly interviewed about 40 civil society stakeholders, activists and journalists. The company’s report has not been published or even given a release date. Rights groups have repeatedly accused Facebook of trying to stifle the report and limit the scope of its findings. Even those involved in the assessment have soured on it. Ritumbra Manuvie, one of the civil society members…
