Facebook’s civil rights audit progress report outlines recent changes & recommendations re content moderation, ad targeting, elections & accountability
"Facebook's civil rights audit - progress report," 20 June 2019
... One of the primary focus areas of this update is... three categories of content moderation concerns that have been most frequently raised by civil rights groups: 1) Over-enforcement of hate speech policies that takes the form of removing content where users condemn or speak out against hate speech; 2) Under-enforcement of hate speech policies where hateful content is left on the platform; and 3) Harassment of users on the platform... In March 2019, Facebook announced a new policy banning the explicit praise, support, or representation of white nationalism and white separatism on Facebook... The Auditors believe that Facebook’s current white nationalism policy is too narrow...[and] recommends that Facebook expand the white nationalism policy to prohibit content which expressly praises, supports, or represents white nationalist ideology even if it does not explicitly use the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism.”
... Facebook has committed to creating a new process where advertisers offering housing, employment, or credit opportunities will be diverted to a system that only offers a limited set of targeting options... this new system will restrict ad targeting options to help guard against discrimination or misuse... Facebook is currently working on expanding its voting-related policies to prohibit other forms of voter interference... [Finally] Facebook has created and institutionalized a Civil Rights Task Force... [which] will onboard strong civil rights expertise to support the Task Force’s work... [and] has committed to expert civil rights training for key groups of employees and managers.