One of the world's social media giants may be acting negligently in protecting overseas users as its markets in foreign nations continue to grow.
According to the Wall Street Journal, more than 90% of Facebook's users reside outside of the U.S. and Canada. Despite this overwhelming majority of the social platform's participants being in developing countries, its safety and regulation standards are inconsistently forced in those nations in exchange for bolstered user growth, the WSJ said.
Since 2015, Facebook has developed its Dangerous Individuals and Organizations (DIO) policy – a standard for allowing potentially violent groups to be discussed and present on the platform – introduced when concerns regarding ISIS recruitment in America via Facebook reached an all-time high. The standard also applies to users and content that praises or supports groups with violent inclinations or histories.
The three-tier DIO standard aims to prevent and disrupt clear and present danger by prohibiting people or organizations to post violent content. Facebook removes praise, support and representation of Tier 1 offenders, including their leaders, founders or influential members.
According to Facebook's transparency page: "Tier 1 focuses on entities that engage in serious offline harms - including organizing or advocating for violence against civilians, repeatedly dehumanizing or advocating for harm against people based on protected characteristics, or engaging in systematic criminal operations. Tier 1 entities include terrorist, hate, and criminal organizations. Tier 1 includes hate organizations; criminal organizations, including those designated by the United States government as Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficking Kingpins (SDNTKs); and terrorist organizations, including entities and individuals designated by the United States government as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) or Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs)."
In 2020, the platform introduced the Facebook Oversight Board, meant to interpret, enforce and challenge the DIO standard. Users in North America are subject to filtration and censorship by the DIO standard.
Some domestic cases reviewed by the Board have been widely approved – such as upholding the restriction of former President Donald Trump after he incited and praised the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol – while others, particularly foreign cases, have drawn major skepticism of whether the standard is applied fairly across the platform's global reach.
Content from overseas users that praise or highlight political dissonance or insurgence against foreign governments have been censored by Facebook, including the deletion of a video praising Indian farmers for protesting India's ruling political party. In this instance, the Board criticized Facebook's vague definitions of "praise and support," and the fact that the DIO standard wasn't available to Indian Facebook users, according to Just Security.
The Board also questioned if Facebook complied with pressure from the Indian government to stifle content about alleged governmental treatment of farmers and the farmers' protests. In the WSJ article, former Facebook VP Brian Boland seemingly corroborated this question, stating that harm in developing countries is "simply the cost of doing business" in securing user participation and good relations with business partners or authoritarian governments in those nations.
"There is very rarely a significant, concerted effort to invest in fixing those areas," Boland said.
The WSJ secured internal Facebook documents and internal message board histories that detailed how the platform has been negligent in responding to its internal investigators' concern about harmful behavior in overseas Facebook groups.
For example, Facebook employees discovered Middle Eastern groups that lured women with employment opportunities, which turned out to be sex trafficking traps. Others found dangerous content originating from violent Ethiopian groups calling for violence against ethnic minorities.
Countless instances of violence, pornography, organ selling and governmental action against political dissent were documented, as were countless negligent or nonexistent responses from the platform.
Facebook employs little to no people familiar with the language or dialects used in areas where these criminal uses of the platform are occurring.
The ultimate reveal of the documents was that Facebook employees agree with activists that Facebook did little or nothing to shield users from dangerous content, especially in developing nations with rampant drug cartels and human trafficking. Although Facebook occasionally removed the posts, offending accounts remained active and/or new ones were created by the same users.
Facebook user growth in developing or poorer countries is booming, yet the platform primarily focuses its safety efforts on its wealthier, more developed markets with pressure from powerful governments and scrutiny from media institutions.
In developed countries, the social media giant has given special treatment to high-profile users, including politicians and celebrities. These famous users did not face consequences for sharing inflammatory claims deemed false by Facebook fact-checkers, including claims that Hillary Clinton was involved in child sex trafficking, that former President Donald Trump called refugees animals and that vaccines are deadly, according to WSJ.
Facebook claims to be working on improvements in its role in foreign violence, citing efforts to develop artificial intelligence dedicated to anti-violence roles and involvement in activism campaigns.
"In counties at risk for conflict and violence, we have a comprehensive strategy, including relying on global teams with native speakers covering over 50 languages, educational resources, and partnerships with local experts and third-party fact checkers to keep people safe," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said earlier this month, according to WSJ.