NHO Flashcards
What is our Policy Mission?
Making the world more open and connected.
Only intervene when necessary. Some people think that our job is to ban all the bad things. It is of course more nuanced than that. There are 3 main things we focus on to achieve this aim.
1) Safety - Avoid harm
2) Foster Community - Make sure users do not feel that our platform is not inclusive
3) Protect speech - allow users to express themselves even if those expressions may be distasteful or unsavoury, as long as not harmful.
What are the key things we think about when writing policies?
1) Principled - Rooted in good reasoning. we involve a large XFN to debate our policies before we enact them, to make sure it is thought through and principled.
2) Operable - Can our teams of 1000s of reviewers reasonably implement this policy?
3) Explicable - Can we explain this to press, politicians/regulators, advocacy groups?
What is our policy on breastfeeding?
We do not prohibit photographs of female nipples if at least one of the breasts is engaged in the feeding of a baby/child or animal (latched or feeding or in a reasonable position to begin feeding) or attached to a breast-pump.
That means that both nipples may be fully visible in the context of breastfeeding.
Mistakes in this area are sensitive. Breastfeeding activists or ‘lactivists’ are vocal in the media because people harass them in public. Any removals of this content make us exposed to suggestions of censorship.
What is our policy on naked female nipples generally?
We prohibit real images of nudity. Nudity is defined to include images of female nipples. When we have extra context about why a particular image is being shared, we do make exceptions on a case by case basis.
Our nudity policies have become more nuanced over time. We understand that nudity can be shared for a variety of reasons, including as a form of protest, to raise awareness about a cause, or for educational or medical reasons. Where such intent is clear, we make allowances for the content.
We may consider a newsworthy exception for a photo or video depiction in a cultural context where open and public nudity is the societal norm depending on the context. In those cases we typically age gate the content.
Can you say “You are THIS gay”?
We do not consider “gay” to be a derogatory term under our policies. So you can generally say John is gay without violating our policies, although we do remove content that puts individuals at risk by revealing their sexual identity against their will or without permission when we have sufficient context to believe this to be the case.
Who am I?
I am a recovering lawyer from Singapore. I have been at FB and this team for 2 years, which means I’ve now worked at FB longer than 68.4% of this company. I also discovered today that I am one of 3 Ryan Thomas’ working at FB.
A little about CP
Content Policy is the team that owns our Community Standards, the document which governs what people can and cannot post on FB and IG. Content Policy sits within the Product Policy team which falls under the Policy & Comms Org. There is a separate org called the global operations team, which includes community operations. CO is the team which manages enforcement of our policies worldwide, including oversight over our outsourcing operators. In total we have about 20,000 people working on enforcing the policies that Content Policy writes. We have around 25 people on the Conten Policy team, sitting across offices in the US, Dublin and APAC. The team is not organised to provide support by geography. We provide support by subject matter area.
Why does the Anne Frank meme violate our policies?
Under our Hate Speech policies, people are prohibited from mocking victims of hate crimes. We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disability or disease. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, and calls for exclusion or segregation.
Why doesn’t the Ed Norton pic violate our policies?
We remove content that expresses support or praise for groups, leaders, or individuals involved in terrorist activity, organised hate, mass murder and the like because these entities use violent, exploitative and hateful means to cause real world harm.
We do not allow symbols that represent any of the above organizations or individuals to be shared on our platform without context that condemns or neutrally discusses the content. In this case, this being a fictional setting, we would allow this content.
Why does the ISIS flag as cover photo with no caption violate?
Displaying ISIS flag as cover photo is considered support for a terrorist organization. Unless there is clear context that condemns or neutrally discusses the content, it would violate our policies. In this case we would disable the profile because we do not allow this group to maintain a presence (e.g. have an account, Page, Group) on our platform:
Would the Merkel in a Nazi uniform pic violate?
The presence of a hate symbol like the swastika would typically be deleted off our platform by default, for representation of a hate org. However, when it is associated with a public figure like in this case Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, we would leave this content up because the context would suggest that this is political speech. iF there was an additional caption saying “Grammar Nazi”, we would again leave it up, as the context would suggest that the content is being posted potentially in a humorous context, but certainly not in a hate context.
