Facebook reveals 25 pages of takedown rules for hate speech and more

Facebook has never before made public the guidelines its moderators use to decide whether to remove violence, spam, harassment, self-harm, terrorism, intellectual property theft, and hate speech from social network until now. The company hoped to avoid making it easy to game these rules, but that worry has been overridden by the public’s constant calls for clarity and protests about its decisions. Today Facebook published 25 pages of detailed criteria and examples for what is and isn’t allowed.

Facebook is effectively shifting where it will be criticized to the underlying policy instead of individual incidents of enforcement mistakes like when it took down posts of the newsworthy “Napalm Girl” historical photo because it contains child nudity before eventually restoring them. Some groups will surely find points to take issue with, but Facebook has made some significant improvements. Most notably, it no longer disqualifies minorities from shielding from hate speech because an unprotected characteristic like “children” is appended to a protected characteristic like “black”.

Nothing is technically changing about Facebook’s policies. But previously, only leaks like a copy of an internal rulebook attained by the Guardian had given the outside world a look at when Facebook actually enforces those policies. These rules will be translated into over 40 languages for the public. Facebook currently has 7500 content reviewers, up 40% from a year ago.

Facebook also plans to expand its content removal appeals process, It already let users request a review of a decision to remove their profile, Page, or Group. Now Facebook will notify users when their nudity, sexual activity, hate speech or graphic violence content is removed and let them hit a button to “Request Review”, which will usually happen within 24 hours. Finally, Facebook will hold Facebook Forums: Community Standards events in Germany, France, the UK, India, Singapore, and the US to give its biggest communities a closer look at how the social network’s policy works.

Fixing the “white people are protected, black children aren’t” policy

Facebook’s VP of Global Product Management Monika Bickert who has been coordinating the release of the guidelines since September told reporters at Facebook’s Menlo Park HQ last week that “There’s been a lot of research about how when institutions put their policies out there, people change their behavior, and that’s a good thing.” She admits there’s still the concern that terrorists or hate groups will get better at developing “workarounds” to evade Facebook’s moderators, “but the benefits of being more open about what’s happening behind the scenes outweighs that.”

Content moderator jobs at various social media companies including Facebook have been described as hellish in many exposes regarding what it’s like to fight the spread of child porn, beheading videos, racism for hours a day. Bickert says Facebook’s moderators get trained to deal with this and have access to counseling and 24/7 resources, including some on-site. They can request to not look at certain kinds of content they’re sensitive to. But Bickert didn’t say Facebook imposes an hourly limit on how much offensive moderators see per day like how YouTube recently implemented a four-hour limit.

A controversial slide depicting Facebook’s now-defunct policy that disqualified subsets of protected groups from hate speech shielding. Image via ProPublica

The most useful clarification in the newly revealed guidelines explains how Facebook has ditched its poorly received policy that deemed “white people” as protected from hate speech, but not “black children”. That rule that left subsets of protected groups exposed to hate speech was blasted in a ProPublica piece in June 2017, though Facebook said it no longer applied that policy.

Now Bickert says “Black children — that would be protected. White men — that would also be protected. We consider it an attack if it’s against a person, but you can criticize an organization, a religion . . . If someone says ‘this country is evil’, that’s something that we allow. Saying ‘members of this religion are evil’ is not.” She explains that Facebook is becoming more aware of the context around who is being victimized. However, Bickert notes that if someone says “‘I’m going to kill you if you don’t come to my party’, if it’s not a credible threat we don’t want to be removing it.” 

Do community standards = editorial voice?

Being upfront about its policies might give Facebook more to point to when it’s criticized for failing to prevent abuse on its platform. Activist groups say Facebook has allowed fake news and hate speech to run rampant and lead to violence in many developing countries where Facebook hasn’t had enough native speaking moderators. The Sri Lankan government temporarily blocked Facebook in hopes of ceasing calls for violence, and those on the ground say Zuckerberg overstated Facebook improvements to the problem in Myanmar that led to hate crimes against the Rohingya people.

Revealing the guidelines could at least cut down on confusion about whether hateful content is allowed on Facebook. It isn’t. Though the guidelines also raise the question of whether the Facebook value system it codifies means the social network has an editorial voice that would define it as a media company. That could mean the loss of legal immunity for what its users post. Bickert stuck to a rehearsed line that “We are not creating content and we’re not curating content”. Still, some could certainly say all of Facebook’s content filters amount to a curatorial layer.

But whether Facebook is a media company or a tech company, it’s a highly profitable company. It needs to spend some more of the billions it earns each quarter applying the policies evenly and forcefully around the world.

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First State Dinner: A Chance For Melania Trump To Put Her Stamp On The White House

First lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump, Brigitte Macron and French President Emmanuel Macron walk across the South Lawn before participating in a tree-planting ceremony at the White House April 23. Trump is hosting Macron for a two-day official visit that will include a state dinner Tuesday night.

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First lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump, Brigitte Macron and French President Emmanuel Macron walk across the South Lawn before participating in a tree-planting ceremony at the White House April 23. Trump is hosting Macron for a two-day official visit that will include a state dinner Tuesday night.

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Fifteen months into the Trump presidency, the first state dinner, in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron, will be a big moment for first lady Melania Trump, who has kept a lower profile than many of her predecessors.

“It’s much more than just a dinner,” said Kate Andersen Brower, author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies and a forthcoming book about vice presidents.

When it comes to state dinners, every choice from the china to the shape of the tables and the number of guests makes a statement that reflects the tastes of the first family, and especially the first lady. And a whole lot of people are watching. C-SPAN even provides live special coverage of some dinners.

“Laura Bush said she wasn’t nervous before her own wedding but she was nervous before the first state dinner with the Mexican president,” said Brower. “I think it’s a lot of pressure.”

Bush wrote about the preparations in her book Spoken From The Heart, making the comparison to her wedding:

“A state dinner is far more intricate, an elaborate display of hundreds of moving parts, from guest lists and menus, which require an advance tasting, to table seatings, arrival protocols, and choices of linens, flowers, china, and silver, even the champagnes and wines.”

It went off without a hitch, the night ending with a fireworks display over the Washington monument.

But the Obama’s first state dinner for the Indian prime minister in November 2009 wasn’t quite so flawless. The menu was prepared by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. Jennifer Hudson provided the entertainment. The decorations were lush. But it was all overshadowed by news of gate crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi. They weren’t invited but were auditioning for the Real Housewives of D.C. reality show and somehow made it past multiple layers of security to get into the dinner.

Then-President Barack Obama greets Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who became known as the “gate crashers,” in November 2009.

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Then-President Barack Obama greets Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who became known as the “gate crashers,” in November 2009.

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“There are cautionary tales from every administration and no one escapes,” said Lea Berman, who was White House social secretary in the time of George W. and Laura Bush and is co-author of a book called Treating People Well.

“The first of anything and particularly the first of a state dinner after so long without having one, and this is not the first administration to wait an unusually long time to try a state dinner, makes it a little bit — the stakes are higher, let’s say,” said Berman of the Macron dinner.

She argued the stakes should be high. Berman said this dinner in particular is important because of the growing friendship between Presidents Trump and Macron and the recent military strikes in Syria, which were conducted by both countries along with the UK.

“You have the president and first lady extending not just their personal hospitality, but American hospitality, and it should reflect the best of what America has to offer,” Berman said.

Berman expressed confidence the team in the first lady’s office, which includes Bush administration veterans whom she stays in touch with, will be able to pull off the dinner. But there are some things you just can’t plan for.

State dinner mishaps

There was the state dinner celebrating the Bicentennial of the United States and honoring the Queen of England. President Ford began to dance with Queen Elizabeth, just as the Marine Band struck up “The Lady Is a Tramp.”

President Ford and first lady Betty Ford pose with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip outside the North Portico of the White House on July 7, 1976.

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“And afterward the social secretary Maria Downs said to the president, ‘I was so embarrassed about that sir, do you think she noticed?’ And he looked kind of grim and said, ‘She noticed,’” Berman said.

It seems the Ford administration may have been star-crossed when it came to state dinners. In October 1975, Johnny Cash was supposed to provide the entertainment for a dinner honoring Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

President Ford’s remarks introducing Pearl Bailey and explaining why Johnny Cash was a no-show at the October 1975 state dinner.

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Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

“You can see from your programs, Johnny Cash was to be our featured guest tonight,” President Ford’s remarks read. “Unfortunately, this will not be possible.”

Instead he introduced Pearl Bailey, a Broadway performer who had provided the entertainment at another state dinner earlier that year and also during the Nixon administration.

Behind the scenes there had been a mad scramble. “At the last minute, literally they day of the event, they had to find a new entertainer,” said Berman.

First ladies put their stamp on state dinners

Every modern administration has approached state dinners differently, reflecting the tastes and styles of the first lady at the time. The Eisenhowers used tables connected end-to-end in the shape of a U. But that didn’t work for the Kennedys.

“Jackie Kennedy came in and said, ‘Look, I want smaller cocktail tables so people can actually talk,’” said Brower.

The Reagans, Clintons and Obamas had more celebrities in attendance than other administrations — though Nancy Reagan preferred small, intimate gatherings, while the Obamas went big often with the dinners held in tents on the South Lawn.

Tuesday night’s dinner, said Brower, will be the first chance to see how the Trump’s entertain in the people’s house.

In a statement, the White House said the first lady carefully selected all details of the dinner to “complement and pay homage to the long-standing friendship between the United States and France.”

The menu is meant to pay tribute to American culinary traditions with “nuances of French influences.” It begins with a course of goat cheese gateau, tomato jam, buttermilk biscuits and greens from the White House kitchen garden. The main course includes lamb, cipollini soubise and Carolina gold rice jambalaya. To finish it off, the Macrons will be treated to a nectarine tart with crème fraîche ice cream.

The meal will be served on both the Clinton and George W. Bush china, which features a green color palette to complement the green flowers that will be featured in the dining room.

There will also be more than 1,200 branches of cherry blossom, all homegrown in the United States, and more than 2,500 stems of white sweet peas and 1,000 stems of white lilac.

Dinner china is set before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump host French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, for the first state visit of the Trump administration, in the State Dinning room of the White House, on April 23, 2018 in Washington, DC.

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Dinner china is set before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump host French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, for the first state visit of the Trump administration, in the State Dinning room of the White House, on April 23, 2018 in Washington, DC.

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The Kennedy Center’s Washington National Opera is expected to perform.

Still, some questions remain: Who made the final guest list? What will Melania Trump wear?

“Melania I mean, God, everyone’s going to be watching to see her expression and what she’s wearing,” said Brower. “We just know nothing about her. She’s such a cipher.”

One possible hint: In 1999 Melania Knauss, then just dating Donald Trump, told the The New York Times that if she and Trump were to wind up in the White House, she would be very traditional — “like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy.”

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