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

"Meta’s policies prohibit efforts to organize criminal or harmful activities targeting people, businesses, or property (including targeting of those who provide reproductive health services). We do not allow targeting of private individuals with derogatory terms related to sexual activity or threats of lethal violence. Imagery depicting a fetus in an abortion context is marked as “Sensitive”, meaning it is placed behind a warning screen but not age-gated. Additional rules apply to ads promoting prescription drugs, adult products or services, as well as to ads debating social issues like abortion.

Meta does not use medical history to inform the interest categories available to advertisers, and we prohibit businesses from sending us sensitive health information.

Fighting misinformation is an ever-evolving problem, and Meta can’t do it alone. We rely on independent fact-checkers to review and rate the accuracy of content through original reporting, which may include interviewing primary sources, consulting public data and conducting analyses of media, including photos and videos.

You may find it relevant to know we have built the largest global fact-checking network of any platform and have contributed more than $100 million to programs supporting our fact-checking efforts since 2016. This includes direct support of fact-checkers for their work on our platforms as well as industry initiatives like sponsorships, fellowships, and grant programs.

When a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, including Spanish-language content, we reduce its distribution so fewer people see it, notify people who try to share the content—or who previously shared it—that the information was rated by a fact-checker, and we add a warning label that links to the fact-checker’s article with more information about the claim.

Fact-checkers do not remove content, accounts or Pages from our apps. We remove content when it violates our Community Standards, which are separate from our fact-checking programs.

All of our third-party fact checking partners may choose to review and rate posts about abortion. Two examples include fact-checks by the Associated Press (“Posts falsely claim abortion is never medically necessary”) and by Politifact (“Fact-checking the false claim that Plan B causes abortions”).

It’s important to note our fact checking partners independently decide what content to review and what rating to apply. The focus of our fact-checking program is to identify and address viral misinformation, particularly clear hoaxes that have no basis in fact. So fact-checkers generally prioritize provably false claims that are timely, trending and consequential."