Rights groups express concern over Facebook censorship News
Rights groups express concern over Facebook censorship

Seventy-seven advocacy groups penned a letter [text, PDF] to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Wednesday asking for transparency in the social media website’s censorship of speech. The groups are concerned with Facebook’s censorship of people of color’s posts, mainly regarding political speech and law enforcement. The letter was backed by 77 different groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website]. The letter criticized the website for taking down posts against police, yet not doing enough to to white supremacists on the platform. “Facebook’s third-party complaint process has failed to prevent the spread of violent threats and harassment by white supremacist hate groups on your platform” the letter states. The groups are seeking to add transparency to why the website removes certain posts, including an independent public report over the censorship data. The groups are urging that Facebook comply with their recommendations in order to preserve free speech and human rights.

This is not the first time that Facebook has been approached by advocacy groups in order to produce greater transparency. In October groups sent a different letter [text, PDF] over Facebook allegedly deleting posts [JURIST report] over human rights abuses. Earlier in January the European Commission proposed stricter rules [JURIST report] to govern electronic communications, which would have overreaching consequences over social media websites. In July 2016 a lawsuit was filed against Facebook for allegedly facilitating [JURIST report] Palestinian military attacks.