Revealed: Facebook's internal rulebook on sex, terrorism and violence
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Nick Hopkins
Leaked policies guiding moderators on what content to allow are likely to fuel debate about social media giant’s ethics
Facebook’s secret rules and guidelines for
deciding what its 2 billion users can post on the site are revealed for
the first time in a Guardian investigation that will fuel the global debate about the role and ethics of the social media giant.
The Guardian has seen more than 100 internal
training manuals, spreadsheets and flowcharts that give unprecedented
insight into the blueprints Facebook has used to moderate issues such as
violence, hate speech, terrorism, pornography, racism and self-harm.
They illustrate difficulties faced by executives scrabbling to react to new challenges such as “revenge porn” – and the challenges for moderators, who say they are overwhelmed by the volume of work, which means they often have “just 10 seconds” to make a decision.
“Facebook cannot keep control of its content,” said one source. “It has grown too big, too quickly.”
Many moderators are said to have concerns
about the inconsistency and peculiar nature of some of the policies.
Those on sexual content, for example, are said to be the most complex
and confusing.
One document says Facebook reviews more than 6.5m reports a week relating to potentially fake accounts – known as FNRP (fake, not real person).
Yet these blueprints may also alarm free
speech advocates concerned about Facebook’s de facto role as the world’s
largest censor. Both sides are likely to demand greater transparency.
The Guardian has seen documents supplied to Facebook moderators within the last year. The files tell them:
Remarks such as “Someone shoot Trump” should be deleted,
because as a head of state he is in a protected category. But it can be
permissible to say: “To snap a bitch’s neck, make sure to apply all
your pressure to the middle of her throat”, or “fuck off and die”
because they are not regarded as credible threats.
Videos of violent deaths,
while marked as disturbing, do not always have to be deleted because
they can help create awareness of issues such as mental illness.
Anyone with more than 100,000 followers on a social media
platform is designated as a public figure – which denies them the full
protections given to private individuals.
Other types of remarks that can be permitted
by the documents include: “Little girl needs to keep to herself before
daddy breaks her face,” and “I hope someone kills you.” The threats are regarded as either generic or not credible.
In one of the leaked documents, Facebook
acknowledges “people use violent language to express frustration online”
and feel “safe to do so” on the site.
It says: “They feel that the issue won’t come
back to them and they feel indifferent towards the person they are
making the threats about because of the lack of empathy created by
communication via devices as opposed to face to face.
Facebook’s policy on threats of violence. A tick means
something can stay on the site; a cross means it should be deleted.
Photograph: Guardian
“We should say that violent language is most
often not credible until specificity of language gives us a reasonable
ground to accept that there is no longer simply an expression of emotion
but a transition to a plot or design. From this perspective language
such as ‘I’m going to kill you’ or ‘Fuck off and die’ is not credible
and is a violent expression of dislike and frustration.”
It adds: “People commonly express disdain or
disagreement by threatening or calling for violence in generally
facetious and unserious ways.”
Facebook conceded that “not all disagreeable or disturbing content violates our community standards”.
Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global
policy management, said the service had almost 2 billion users and that
it was difficult to reach a consensus on what to allow.
A Facebook slide on threats of violence. The ticks mean these statements need not be deleted.
“We have a really diverse global community and
people are going to have very different ideas about what is OK to
share. No matter where you draw the line there are always going to be
some grey areas. For instance, the line between satire and humour and
inappropriate content is sometimes very grey. It is very difficult to
decide whether some things belong on the site or not,” she said.
“We feel responsible to our community to keep
them safe and we feel very accountable. It’s absolutely our
responsibility to keep on top of it. It’s a company commitment. We will
continue to invest in proactively keeping the site safe, but we also
want to empower people to report to us any content that breaches our
standards.”
She said some offensive comments may violate Facebook policies in some contexts, but not in others.
The files say: “Videos of violent deaths are
disturbing but can help create awareness. For videos, we think minors
need protection and adults need a choice. We mark as ‘disturbing’ videos
of the violent deaths of humans.”
Such footage should be “hidden from minors”
but not automatically deleted because it can “be valuable in creating
awareness for self-harm afflictions and mental illness or war crimes and
other important issues”.
A slide on animal cruelty.
Regarding non-sexual child abuse, Facebook says:
“We do not action photos of child abuse. We mark as disturbing videos
of child abuse. We remove imagery of child abuse if shared with sadism
and celebration.”
One slide explains Facebook does not
automatically delete evidence of non-sexual child abuse to allow the
material to be shared so “the child [can] be identified and rescued, but
we add protections to shield the audience”. This might be a warning on
the video that the content is disturbing.
Facebook confirmed there are “some situations
where we do allow images of non-sexual abuse of a child for the purpose
of helping the child”.
Its policies on animal abuse
are also explained, with one slide saying: “We allow photos and videos
documenting animal abuse for awareness, but may add viewer protections
to some content that is perceived as extremely disturbing by the
audience.
“Generally, imagery of animal abuse can be shared on the site. Some extremely disturbing imagery may be marked as disturbing.”
Photos of animal mutilation, including those
showing torture, can be marked as disturbing rather than deleted.
Moderators can also leave photos of abuse where a human kicks or beats
an animal.
The documents include guidance on non-sexual child abuse. Composite: alamy
Facebook said: “We allow people to share
images of animal abuse to raise awareness and condemn the abuse but
remove content that celebrates cruelty against animals.”
It now allows for “newsworthy exceptions”
under its “terror of war” guidelines but draws the line at images of
“child nudity in the context of the Holocaust”.
Facebook told the Guardian it was using
software to intercept some graphic content before it got on the site,
but that “we want people to be able to discuss global and current events
… so the context in which a violent image is shared sometimes matters”.
A Facebook slide on its Holocaust policy. Photograph: Guardian
But Bickert said Facebook was “a new kind of
company. It’s not a traditional technology company. It’s not a
traditional media company. We build technology, and we feel responsible
for how it’s used. We don’t write the news that people read on the
platform.”
A report by British MPs
published on 1 May said “the biggest and richest social media companies
are shamefully far from taking sufficient action to tackle illegal or
dangerous content, to implement proper community standards or to keep
their users safe”.
Sarah T Roberts, an expert on content
moderation, said: “It’s one thing when you’re a small online community
with a group of people who share principles and values, but when you
have a large percentage of the world’s population and say ‘share
yourself’, you are going to be in quite a muddle.
“Then when you monetise that practice you are entering a disaster situation.”
Facebook has consistently struggled to assess the news or “awareness” value of violent imagery. While the company recently faced harsh criticism for failing to remove videos of Robert Godwin being killed in the US and of a father killing his child in Thailand, the platform has also played an important role in disseminating videos of police killings and other government abuses.
In 2016, Facebook removed a video showing the immediate aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile but subsequently reinstated the footage, saying the deletion was a “mistake”.
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