Facebook launches corporate policy, fund to support human rights

Anti-coup demonstrators sprays fire extinguishers over a barricade during a protests in Yangon, Myanmar, on March 9. (Image: Reuters/Stringer)

Facebook has launched a corporate human rights policy, covering all of Facebook Inc., and a fund to support human rights, the company announced on March 16.

The announcement was made in a blog post by Miranda Sissons, Director of Human Rights at Facebook.

Acknowledging that human rights are being increasingly violated online, Sissons wrote: “Billions of people enjoy the freedom of expression, access to information and the right to education in the digital space. But they can also experience hate speech, bullying and harassment and have their privacy violated in that same space.”

Sissons said Facebook is committed to “respecting human rights in our business operations, product development, policies and programming” and the corporate police and fund are both aimed at furthering this commitment.

The corporate human rights policy will “strive to respect” standards defined in international laws such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), and “will apply these to apps, products, policies programming and overall approach to business,” Sissons stated.

Under the policy, the company will also report “our most critical human rights issues” to its Board of Directors and issue an annual public report on how concerns stemming from the use of Facebook products, policies or business practices are being addressed.

“This yearly report will build on our existing practice of disclosing human rights impact assessments and detailed responses to recommendations,” she said, and adding: “very few other companies do” the same.

Explaining more about the fund, Sissons said Facebook has “worked over the years” to support human rights defenders using the platform and this fund will provide “offline support.

“(The) fund we are creating will give offline assistance to human rights defenders facing critical threats and support new digital security efforts, beginning in Asia later this year. We’ll also build on our existing work to protect defenders’ accounts,” she wrote.

She did not disclose the size of the fund or other particulars.

These efforts she said include combating malicious actors who are targeting them, protecting them from incorrect content removals using Cross Check, offering advanced security options, taking steps to thwart unauthorized access to the accounts of defenders who are arrested or detained, and partnering with human rights organizations on outreach and training.

The policy is being launched as part of the company’s ‘Global Network Initiative’ and includes actions such as:

- establishing an independent Oversight Board,

- publicly sharing our human rights due diligence, changing key content policies – such as creating a new policy to remove verified misinformation and unverifiable rumours that may put people at risk for imminent physical harm (a result of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Impact Assessment)

- building tools and strategies to tackle harmful content in the countries we have prioritized as most at risk of conflict, including most recently in Myanmar,

- lawfully disclosing data to the Independent Investigative Mission on Myanmar, and

- launching important protections for journalists to help them counter harassment and hacking.

Acknowledging that the “struggle for human rights online” will continue to face challenges from an increasing number of authoritarian governments seeking to “exert control over the internet and use it as a means of repression,” Sissons said she the company “will do all it can to live up to its commitments” and hoped they would be “judged based on our actions, not our words.”