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Company Response

31 Aug 2022

Author:
Meta

Response from Meta to allegations about deflecting accountability and perpetuating human rights harms in India

Meta response to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, August 31, 2022

"We note that, at the time of writing, there is no tech company other than Meta that has publicly released insights and actions from country-based due diligence. Meta’s disclosure seeks to follow best practice guidelines published by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as well as the reporting guidance from the Danish Institute for Human Rights Guidance on HRIA of Digital Activities. The disclosure includes sections on insights, risks, and actions. It shares rich detail about salient human rights risks — as well as about steps Meta is taking to prevent or mitigate these risks.

We produced the synthesis in order to mitigate security risks as per UNGP 21(c), which notes disclosure communications should not pose risks to affected stakeholders or personnel.. We consulted multiple human rights and legal experts in our decision to do so.

Independently performed by a respected international law firm, the HRIA found Meta’s platforms provide space for civil society to organize, provide users with essential information and facts on voting, and enable important public health updates. The HRIA noted our commitment to platform safety and integrity in India, and the considerable energy spent in recent years promoting respect for its users and protecting user safety. Our efforts have included implementing an industry-leading set of content rules developed in close consultation with the human rights community; substantial investments in new resources to detect and mitigate hateful and discriminatory speech; new content moderation resources; and recruitment of expert global human rights personnel.

Meta actively seeks to align our content moderation and enforcement policies with international human rights law. We made content policy changes related to a) groups at risk of outing under our coordinating harm policies and b) context-specific content attacking concepts and practices associated with protected characteristics. We also have plans to develop a prototype test for application of the Rabat Principles, and plan to implement it for use as a policy tool of last resort.

During the reporting period, Meta significantly increased its India-related content moderation workforce and language support–including reviewers with both language and cultural expertise across 20 languages commonly spoken in India (in addition to English), as well as multiple India and region-related classifiers. It may interest you to know that Meta began publishing detailed India transparency reporting in June 2021, in accordance with India law. The India Monthly reports are publicly available here. We are also taking additional steps, further described in our Human Rights Report at page 60.

We continue to work towards providing a safe and open platform for all users. And we will continue to include human rights feedback and a diverse range of stakeholders, rights-holders and experts in our work."

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