Facebook’s call-to-arms for a safer community 185 SHARES Share it! Share Tweet

Facebook is a constantly changing platform to keep things fresh and interesting for its users. It has also become a tool for users to discredit each other or become a battleground for users to verbally spew hate to other users expressing differing opinions. In some instances, users have believed they are being targeted by Facebook itself by banning their accounts for being opinionated on Facebook.

On a conference call, the Manila Bulletin has spoken with Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, to address our questions concerning the issues being addressed to Facebook.

“Of course you cannot mandate it,” Bickert said about users being civil on Facebook. “You cannot say, while you’re on Facebook you have to be polite, but what we can do, is try to foster civility through accountability, and that is why, for instance, we require for people to use their real names while they’re on Facebook.”

The policies on Facebook are based on simple terms. Any posts, comments, and pages that cater hate speeches, violent or terror groups, or harassing other users, Facebook will take action on it. On this, Facebook encourages using the report button to help the Facebook communities maintain a safe place for its users.

Even with the perfect policies you will have to be able to enforce them, Bickert said, and that is an entirely different challenge. With almost two billion users worldwide, about 80% users are outside the United States.

“And that means we have people with very different ideas about what is appropriate to share online,” said Bickert. What might be okay to post in places like the United States or France, might not be okay in other places like Egypt or Africa, she added.

Facebook has a way to audit its global moderators by checking if their vetting forms a pattern by swaying one way or the other. While all Facebook moderators address every concern reported to them, they develop specialties on particular topics that allow them to make better decisions. This way Facebook knows that the right person is handling the complaint.

“Our job is to always to have this one global line and then as we enforce that policy think about the local context that will allow us to enforce it in a way that will make sense for that community,” Bickert said.

“We get more than a million reports each day. And some of those reports may be for the same posts,” Bickert said. “What happens to those reports is Facebook reviews each one with the help of an automated system that streamlines those reports. Then people based around the world review the reported content and apply the policies to it. If the content violates the policies then it shall be removed.”

Having reviewers based around the world is part of the reason why Facebook is developing a global set of policies, a clear and objective guideline to enforce these policies.

“Every piece on Facebook can be reported,” Bickert said, encouraging users to report things such as harassment, threat to violence, among others. And reports are confidential to protect the users who made the report.

“It’s a way for us to let people control their experience and know where they stand,” Bickert said.

Bickert said that there are people reviewing content every single day, 24-7. Most reports have been solved in less than 24 hours, Bickert said. “We don’t always make that goal because there may be times where we take extra careful look at the content or we need to send it to another language specialist.”

Answering Manila Bulletin questions, we first asked comments on some journalists’ claims of being banned from Facebook because of their political stance.

“We don’t have any policies against criticizing a country, a government, or a religion, for that matter,” Bickert said. “People can engage on political speech on Facebook. We draw the line if there are threats of violence, or hate speech, or something that would threaten safety, but political speech is welcome.”

On December, many Facebook users in the Philippines have claimed they have been logged out. Many journalists have said that those people were being targeted.

To this, Bickert said, “One thing I should point out is sometimes we do have technical problems that are unrelated to the policies. And we’ve seen this time to time over the years around the world where we will a situation where people may be unable to access their accounts.”

“It was a technical error,” Clare Wareing, APAC Policy Comms, said. “It actually impacted people outside the Philippines as well.”

Almost all news organizations in the Philippines reported that mass reporting works to knock off a page on Facebook, say, 2000 reports, we asked Bickert about this directly.

“I can definitely clear up for you,” Bickert said. “The way our system works, if somebody reports content, we review it. If somebody else reports it, we review it. At a certain point, we shield that content and do not review it anymore, because we know it does not violate our policies. There’s no magical number, it absolutely makes no difference if there is one report or five hundred.”

We asked Bickert about policies concerning fake news that are spreading on Facebook.

“We want to people to come and connect and share on Facebook and we know they won’t do that if they don’t feel safe,” said Bickert. “Another thing we know is that people want to connect to accurate information, people don’t want to connect to false information, or hoaxes, and because of that we do know that we do have a number of initiatives that we’re exploring to help people understand when something may be a hoax, and also to improve the overall digital literacy of people using Facebook.”

Facebook continues to encourage its users to report any posts, comments, or pages that harasses, incite hate, or about violent groups. Facebook is only as safe and successful as its users on it.

Tags: facebook, security