EFF, Human Rights Watch, and Over 70 Civil Society Groups Ask Mark Zuckerberg to Provide All Users with Mechanism to Appeal Content Censorship on Facebook

From a Joint Announcement:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and more than 70 human and digital rights groups called on Mark Zuckerberg today to add real transparency and accountability to Facebook’s content removal process. Specifically, the groups demand that Facebook clearly explain how much content it removes, both rightly and wrongly, and provide all users with a fair and timely method to appeal removals and get their content back up.
While Facebook is under enormous—and still mounting—pressure to remove material that is truly threatening, without transparency, fairness, and processes to identify and correct mistakes, Facebook’s content takedown policies too often backfire and silence the very people that should have their voices heard on the platform.
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Onlinecensorship.org, an EFF project for users to report takedown notices, has collected reports of hundreds of unjustified takedown incidents where appeals were unavailable. For most users, content Facebook removes is rarely restored, and some are banned from the platform for no good reason.
EFF, Article 19, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Ranking Digital Rights wrote directly to Mark Zuckerberg today demanding that Facebook implement common sense standards so that average users can easily appeal content moderation decisions, receive prompt replies and timely review by a human or humans, and have the opportunity to present evidence during the review process. The letter was co-signed by more than 70 human rights, digital rights, and civil liberties organizations from South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the U.S.
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In addition to implementing a meaningful appeals process, EFF and partners called on Mr. Zuckerberg to issue transparency reports on community standards enforcement that include a breakdown of the type of content that has been restricted, data on how the content moderation actions were initiated, and the number of decisions that were appealed and found to have been made in error.

Read the Complete Open Letter Sent to Mark Zuckerberg

Learn More About the Santa Clara Principles
Direct toComplete EFF Announcement

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