Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. This week, former President Donald Trump's second
Speaker 1: impeachment trial is taking place in the Senate. At the
Speaker 1: core of the trial is Donald Trump's speech. What did
Speaker 1: the President say and when did he say it? From
Speaker 1: the standpoint of the House managers, donald Trump incited violence
Speaker 1: on January sixth when he gave the speech on the ellipse,
Speaker 1: encouraging his followers to march on the Capitol, which they
Speaker 1: then occupied. From the standpoint of Donald Trump's defense, there
Speaker 1: was no intimate connection, no causal connection, no connection at all,
Speaker 1: they say, between what the President had to say at
Speaker 1: the time and what the rioters did. But impeachment was
Speaker 1: not the only, and possibly not even the most serious
Speaker 1: consequence to Donald Trump of his speech on January six
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, Twitter
Speaker 1: suspended Donald Trump permanently and Facebook suspended Trump indefinitely. Those
Speaker 1: two suspensions effectively blocked Donald Trump from social media, which
Speaker 1: had been the oxygen for his campaign and the main
Speaker 1: method that he used to communicate to his public during
Speaker 1: his presidency. The consequences for the question of free expression
Speaker 1: and social media could not be greater, And indeed, after
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's inauguration, Facebook decided to refer the question of
Speaker 1: Trump's suspension to its newly created Facebook Oversight Board, a
Speaker 1: group of twenty plus experts from all over the world
Speaker 1: who are independent of Facebook and have the authority to
Speaker 1: decide whether its decisions can form with its stated values
Speaker 1: and with Facebook's rules. Right now, the question of trumps
Speaker 1: suspension is pending before the Oversight Board, and Facebook has
Speaker 1: pledged that it will follow the conclusion that the Oversight
Speaker 1: Board reaches. They raise profound and difficult questions about what
Speaker 1: speech should be permitted and what speech should be restrained.
Speaker 1: To discuss these pressing questions and the state of play
Speaker 1: in social media content governance more generally, I'm joined today
Speaker 1: by the Vice President of Content Policy at Facebook, Monica Bickert.
Speaker 1: Monica's job is to run all decisions about content policy
Speaker 1: at Facebook. She was intimately involved in the Trump process,
Speaker 1: the Trump decision, and the decision to pass along the
Speaker 1: Trump case to the Facebook Oversight Board. Before we start
Speaker 1: this conversation, I want to begin by telling my listeners
Speaker 1: that when it comes to the Facebook Oversight Board, I
Speaker 1: am the very opposite of a disinterested observer. I helped
Speaker 1: come up with the idea for the oversight board in
Speaker 1: the first place. I worked as it paid consultant to
Speaker 1: Facebook during the entire three year process of getting the
Speaker 1: board going, and I still advise Facebook now on questions
Speaker 1: of free expression. Indeed, that's how I met Monica during
Speaker 1: the process of working on the oversight board, and we
Speaker 1: became friends and subsequently taught a class together on social
Speaker 1: media and the law at Harvard Law School. With that
Speaker 1: relevant background in mind, I'm excited to turn into our
Speaker 1: conversation Monica. Welcome to deep background, Monica. Let's start with
Speaker 1: the biggest ticket issue in the universe of content moderation
Speaker 1: right upfront, which is the suspension of Donald Trump from
Speaker 1: your platform as well as from Twitter in the wake
Speaker 1: of the January sixth attacks on the Capitol. And I
Speaker 1: guess I just want to begin by asking you, what
Speaker 1: did your internal process look like, how you know in
Speaker 1: the whole complies ecosystem that you're in charge of of
Speaker 1: content policy at Facebook. Did you make your way towards
Speaker 1: this really historic decision. The first thing that happened was
Speaker 1: my attention was brought to a couple of posts by
Speaker 1: then President Trump. My team flagged for me, hey, a
Speaker 1: video has been posted by the President. We're reviewing it
Speaker 1: now to see if it violence any of our content policies,
Speaker 1: but it's something that you need to look at. One
Speaker 1: was a video and one was a text post, and
Speaker 1: they happened during the attack on the Capitol. We saw
Speaker 1: in the president's video that he said I love you
Speaker 1: all and thank you or words to that effect, which
Speaker 1: to us constituted praise. So that was a violation of
Speaker 1: our policies. And then shortly thereafter there was a text
Speaker 1: post that had some of the same language. It called
Speaker 1: those who had reached the Capitol great patriots. So they
Speaker 1: flagged that video. I reviewed it along with some of
Speaker 1: my colleagues, and what we saw was what arose to
Speaker 1: a violation of our policy against celebrations of violence. And
Speaker 1: this is a policy that you may have heard about before,
Speaker 1: in the context of us saying we don't allow anybody
Speaker 1: to praise terror acts or acts of violence. And you
Speaker 1: can think of that as if somebody, if there's a
Speaker 1: bombing somewhere and somebody says, oh, I'm glad that bombing happened.
Speaker 1: We would remove that as praise of a terror act,
Speaker 1: but we removed any praise of violent acts where a
Speaker 1: person is likely to be injured. And here the capital
Speaker 1: attack we knew was a violent act. And this was
Speaker 1: sort of a normal part of our process throughout the
Speaker 1: run up to the election and then the run up
Speaker 1: to the inauguration was having a twenty four hour operation
Speaker 1: center where we were flagging and looking at content that
Speaker 1: potentially violated our policies. And of course that included from
Speaker 1: anyone one of the billions of people using our services,
Speaker 1: but it also did include looking at content that was
Speaker 1: posted by high profile accounts, including the president's account. So, Monica,
Speaker 1: I want to ask first a question about that twenty
Speaker 1: four hour operations center and how they were functioning in
Speaker 1: this instance. How was that working? It was it literally
Speaker 1: that there's someone there in the op center looking to
Speaker 1: see what their president would do next. Well, there's always
Speaker 1: three ways that content can get flagged for our attention,
Speaker 1: and one is a user report. Two is, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: we use technology to try to identify likely violations, and
Speaker 1: three is we work with partners outside the company, and
Speaker 1: that could include depending on where you are in the world,
Speaker 1: safety groups or media groups that might want to flag
Speaker 1: something for us. And when it came to the US election,
Speaker 1: we were working with a number of partners, including elections
Speaker 1: officials and safety groups, voters rights groups, etc. And then
Speaker 1: we also had our teams who were looking at high
Speaker 1: profile accounts, not just because content that violates our policies
Speaker 1: from those accounts would be really important to be on
Speaker 1: top of, but also because sometimes you'll see people who
Speaker 1: have high profile accounts being the subject of attempted hacks
Speaker 1: or attempted abuse in comments, and so those are things
Speaker 1: that our teams do watch. So let me turn now
Speaker 1: to the remarkable observation that you first reacted to the
Speaker 1: Trump post because they were celebrating violence. That's a tiny
Speaker 1: bit different from what the House of Representatives alleged in
Speaker 1: its article of impeachment against Trump, not that he was
Speaker 1: celebrating violence, but that he incited violence. And the difference,
Speaker 1: I guess, is that celebration has when something of violence
Speaker 1: has already happened. You're celebrating the fact that violent thing
Speaker 1: is happening, whereas incitement is the thing of violence hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet. And you're doing something that is encouraging it
Speaker 1: to come about, and that involves a lot of prediction
Speaker 1: on the part of whoever's judging that, in this instance
Speaker 1: by the House and then eventually by the Senate. So
Speaker 1: do you see those things as in some way distinct
Speaker 1: or was it just the case that when Trump gave
Speaker 1: his initial speech to the rally on January sixth, that
Speaker 1: that didn't ring any immediate bells because no violence had
Speaker 1: happened yet. Because if so, that's kind of interesting really
Speaker 1: for the question of impeachment, right, if it didn't look
Speaker 1: like incitement when he said it, and you were all
Speaker 1: sitting there in your twenty four operam looking at it,
Speaker 1: that's sort of not a terrible defense for Trump to
Speaker 1: raise when he says I didn't incite any violence. Not
Speaker 1: a defense to raise with you, but a defense for
Speaker 1: Trump to raise in his impeachment trial. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I would emphasize is with our celebration
Speaker 1: of violence policy that is ultimately about preventing further violence. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, I mentioned earlier, if somebody says, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that bomb went off in that city and killed
Speaker 1: all those people, the reason we remove that is not
Speaker 1: because it's distasteful, though it certainly is. It's because we
Speaker 1: think that people praising and celebrating violent acts glorifies that
Speaker 1: and can lead to further violence. So, whether or not
Speaker 1: you want to call that additional incitement or call it,
Speaker 1: as we do in our pulse, the celebration of violence,
Speaker 1: I think the point is the same, which is, we
Speaker 1: thought there was a risk of additional violence, and we
Speaker 1: thought the president's remarks contributed to that. But is it,
Speaker 1: in fact the case that your own decision to definitely
Speaker 1: suspend President Trump from the platform was driven not by
Speaker 1: the theory that his speech to the crowd on January
Speaker 1: sixth led to the violence, but rather on the basis
Speaker 1: of comments he made after that violence had already begun. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's it is right. What we removed was commentary after
Speaker 1: the violence had begun. It was a video in a
Speaker 1: text post. But the reason that we had that celebration
Speaker 1: of violence policy is because we think that kind of
Speaker 1: commentary can indeed stoke further violence. And in fact, here
Speaker 1: not only did we remove the content, but we extended
Speaker 1: the twenty four hour band that was called for by
Speaker 1: our policies. We extended that indefinitely because we thought the
Speaker 1: risk of violence on the ground was still very present
Speaker 1: and likely would be throughout the transition to power. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting too, the indefinite band through the as it were,
Speaker 1: transition until Joe Biden was eventually sworn into office, at
Speaker 1: which point will come to this later. Facebook turned this
Speaker 1: issue over to its oversight board. Was that then, because
Speaker 1: you were worried about violence, or you were worried that
Speaker 1: somehow the transition itself was in jeopardy through democracy itself
Speaker 1: being in danger, or those basically the same thing. For us,
Speaker 1: it's about the risk of violence. What we're looking at
Speaker 1: is through the lens of our values around allowing speech
Speaker 1: but also promoting safety and removing what we think could
Speaker 1: reasonably contribute to a risk of physical harm to somebody.
Speaker 1: And here we had actual physical harm happening on the grounds.
Speaker 1: We thought there was a continued risk of that, and
Speaker 1: we did not want the president at that time, who
Speaker 1: had a high number of followers, a really big microphone,
Speaker 1: and a pattern of celebrating violence, to be able to
Speaker 1: further stoke violence. The question that a lot of critics
Speaker 1: of Facebook inevitably are asking, once you did do it
Speaker 1: is why not sooner? Right? You say the president was
Speaker 1: glorifying violence, Well, what was it when after the Charlottesville violence,
Speaker 1: which included a death, the president said there were fine
Speaker 1: people on both sides. You know, why wasn't that a
Speaker 1: celebration of violence? Why were in other comments the Trump
Speaker 1: has made over the course of his presidency comparably violations
Speaker 1: of policy, such that only now, when there was intact
Speaker 1: on the Capitol was he actually dep platformed. Well, first,
Speaker 1: I would say this isn't the first time we removed
Speaker 1: content from the president. Any time that we have a
Speaker 1: controversial posts by any world leader, and this has happened
Speaker 1: a number of times, including with President Trump and other
Speaker 1: high profile leaders in the United States, anytime we have
Speaker 1: a post that is close to the line, we have
Speaker 1: to look at what the most natural reading of that
Speaker 1: post is. When you look at that video and he's
Speaker 1: saying I love you and thank you, one could argue
Speaker 1: that he was addressing the protesters generally and not those
Speaker 1: who had breached the capitol. We thought the most natural
Speaker 1: reading since he was also saying, okay, go home peacefully,
Speaker 1: we thought the most natural reading was that he was
Speaker 1: referring to those who had engaged in the violence that
Speaker 1: gets you to the taking down of the specific content.
Speaker 1: But this decision was different because this was an indefinite suspension,
Speaker 1: what at least colloquially one would call a deep platforming,
Speaker 1: which is a bigger deal than taking down content that
Speaker 1: occurred in the past. Was there a specific rule that
Speaker 1: you could point to that merited the deep platforming, the
Speaker 1: indefinite suspension rather than the taking down of the content. Yes.
Speaker 1: So basically, the first time that somebody elates one of
Speaker 1: our policies, unless it's a really severe policy. For instance,
Speaker 1: if somebody posts a child sexual abuse material, then we
Speaker 1: would immediately take down the account. But for violations that
Speaker 1: fall into a general category such as a bullying violation
Speaker 1: or a celebration of violence violation, the first time is
Speaker 1: usually just a warning, But if there is a second
Speaker 1: violation within a period of time, then the consequence is
Speaker 1: generally a twenty four hour ban on that person posting
Speaker 1: on our services. So your account is still there, you
Speaker 1: just can't post anything. And if you recall that day,
Speaker 1: we came out and we said we've removed the president's
Speaker 1: content and he is banned from posting on our services
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours, So that was just a straight
Speaker 1: application of the policy. But what we then did the
Speaker 1: next day, we say, we're going to suspend that privilege
Speaker 1: to post indefinitely because of the fear of further violence,
Speaker 1: and that we at least have that in place through
Speaker 1: the transition of power. So that part that extension from
Speaker 1: twenty four hours with the indefinite suspension was based on
Speaker 1: circumstances on the ground and not just routine application of
Speaker 1: our policies. I will say, of course, that the consequences,
Speaker 1: you know, do we take down somebody's account for this
Speaker 1: certain number of strikes or do we ban them those
Speaker 1: Sometimes we do exercise some judgment. We'll look at somebody's account,
Speaker 1: for instance, and say, well, in this case, we think
Speaker 1: this post was very borderline, and this person didn't get
Speaker 1: at notice of his or her violation until we're actually
Speaker 1: not going to remove the page. We'll give them a
Speaker 1: final warning. That sort of thing is fairly routine. Here
Speaker 1: it went in the other direction. We said, we think
Speaker 1: we need to extend the ban at least through the
Speaker 1: transition of power and indefinitely after that. What would you
Speaker 1: say to a skeptic who said, Okay, I accept that
Speaker 1: you have to exercise judgment. But why is it that
Speaker 1: through the entire of Donald Trump's presidency that judgment did
Speaker 1: not involve his being suspended? And then after Congress stayed
Speaker 1: up all night and voted that he was not ultimately
Speaker 1: that the election was over and that he had lost,
Speaker 1: then suddenly the exerciser judgment went against Trump. You know,
Speaker 1: when he was he posed less of a threat to
Speaker 1: the company. Well, like I said, we had removed content
Speaker 1: from the President's account before he had not hit the
Speaker 1: threshold that would trigger the twenty four hour ban. So
Speaker 1: that's just the application of our policies. I will say
Speaker 1: that one of the questions we've gotten in the wake
Speaker 1: of this decision is what about other world leaders? What
Speaker 1: about world leaders who are seen as by the international community,
Speaker 1: of the human rights community, has real bad guys, and
Speaker 1: why don't you remove them from your service? And what
Speaker 1: I can say there is, again, we remove content when
Speaker 1: it violates our policies. We have removed content from other
Speaker 1: world leaders, and that includes praise of violence. It also
Speaker 1: includes sharing misinformation about COVID nineteen. So we do remove
Speaker 1: that content, but we only impose those additional consequences when
Speaker 1: it's called for under our policies. You mentioned the other
Speaker 1: world leaders. This goes to one of the principles that's
Speaker 1: in your statement of values, and the first of them
Speaker 1: does acknowledge that sometimes because there's a preference that you
Speaker 1: have for freedom of expression, especially on political topics, that
Speaker 1: sometimes elected officials will say or do things that would
Speaker 1: otherwise violate your policies and you don't take them down
Speaker 1: because you think that those things serve positive news value.
Speaker 1: How does that interact with the fact that somebody is
Speaker 1: a world leader, I mean, is that basically a reason
Speaker 1: to be more permissive with respect to statements by world
Speaker 1: leaders with the policy The news wordiness policy is a
Speaker 1: little bit different than that, and actually rarely do we
Speaker 1: use it with world leaders or politicians. Basically, in our
Speaker 1: community standards, we say here's what's prohibited, and then we say,
Speaker 1: if something if we think the value for the public
Speaker 1: in seeing something outweighs the safety risk because of the
Speaker 1: item's newsworthiness, then we may leave it up even if
Speaker 1: it violates our policies. And we do apply that newsworthiness
Speaker 1: policy regularly, I think probably most often in the context of,
Speaker 1: say there's a nude art exhibit or there's an image
Speaker 1: of graphic violence in the context of somebody raising awareness
Speaker 1: about a war, and it shows a nude child or
Speaker 1: something like that, where we would say this is newsworthy,
Speaker 1: so we're going to leave it up. We think that
Speaker 1: the risk of safety is far outweighed by the value
Speaker 1: of people seeing this content. In a small handful of cases,
Speaker 1: we have used that policy to leave up content posted
Speaker 1: by world leaders or politicians, but that's fairly rare. But
Speaker 1: generally it would it would include something where we think
Speaker 1: there's no real safety risk, and we think that people
Speaker 1: should be able to see that this politician engaged in
Speaker 1: this speech which is likely distasteful or there's probably something
Speaker 1: about it that's problematic but not unsafe. I want to
Speaker 1: turn out to the Oversight Board, which I helped advise
Speaker 1: on and you helped construct and build. And in fact
Speaker 1: that's how we met when I came out to Menlo
Speaker 1: Park back when people still traveled places at the very
Speaker 1: very early stages to think and talk about potential oversight
Speaker 1: Board directions. And sure enough, the baby's all grown up.
Speaker 1: And I mean, so far the Oversight Board has decided
Speaker 1: I guess six and a half cases, yeah, five and
Speaker 1: a half cases, five and a half cases, none of
Speaker 1: them on the scale of this decision. This is a
Speaker 1: huge decision, huge for the company, huge for the Oversight Board.
Speaker 1: Possibly not insignificant for politics in the United States, given
Speaker 1: that more than seventy million people voted for Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and lots of Republicans seem to believe that he still
Speaker 1: has a big influence within his party. So I guess
Speaker 1: the first question I have is do you think they're
Speaker 1: ready for it? I do. I do think they are,
Speaker 1: and I think the decisions they just put out so
Speaker 1: basically as you know, but people listening may not know.
Speaker 1: The Oversight Board was constructed to be an independent check
Speaker 1: on the decisions that my team is making, that Facebook
Speaker 1: is making on removing people's content. And when they issued
Speaker 1: their most recent decisions, their first decisions the slight of
Speaker 1: there are five opinions that they put out and then
Speaker 1: there was there was one decision they couldn't make because
Speaker 1: the post was actually removed by the person who had
Speaker 1: posted it. But in their five decisions, they really explained
Speaker 1: their thinking. They demonstrated real seriousness and sophistication, and I
Speaker 1: think I'm really excited about how they approached these first
Speaker 1: cases and the potential for them to decide really important
Speaker 1: cases in the future, starting with the decision to indefinitely
Speaker 1: suspended remove content from President Trump's account. In most of
Speaker 1: the cases that they heard this first trash, the oversight
Speaker 1: Board flipped the decision that Facebook had made. How are
Speaker 1: you going to feel if they flip you on this
Speaker 1: one too? Well, we referred it to them because we
Speaker 1: think they should get to make this decision. So you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're looking forward to that. And I will say
Speaker 1: the criteria for for us. So the way the way
Speaker 1: the board can get a case a user could appeal
Speaker 1: to them be Facebook could say, boy, this is really
Speaker 1: hard and really significant, and we think that somebody else
Speaker 1: should be making this decision. And in this case, we
Speaker 1: decided to refer this to the oversight Board. The Trump decision.
Speaker 1: The criteria we use are is it a significant decision?
Speaker 1: It clearly is? And is it a difficult decision? And
Speaker 1: here the fact that we have had people, some people
Speaker 1: saying why wasn't a permanent band, why didn't you do
Speaker 1: it sooner? And we've had other people saying, I can't
Speaker 1: believe Facebook would remove a sitting president's ability to post
Speaker 1: really shows how difficult this is. So I think they
Speaker 1: are the right group to decide it. And we didn't
Speaker 1: just ask them tell us whether or not we were
Speaker 1: right to remove this particular video and impose this indefinite suspension.
Speaker 1: We said, tell us how we should think about removing
Speaker 1: content from or in definitely suspending. World leaders are those
Speaker 1: in positions of power in countries around the world, so
Speaker 1: this is something that really does have a global implication.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. One of the things
Speaker 1: that's in process right now is that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: being tried for impeachment in front of the US Senate,
Speaker 1: and counting noses, it seems much more probable than not
Speaker 1: that he will not be convicted by the Senate, and
Speaker 1: according to a norm that is in place, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that I don't like it very much, when a
Speaker 1: present is not convicted by the Senate because there's no
Speaker 1: two thirds vote to convict him, that president usually says
Speaker 1: I was acquitted by the Senate. I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: love the word acquitted in that context, because it's nothing
Speaker 1: like acquittal in front of your jury, as you know
Speaker 1: as a former prosecutor. But the president is likely to
Speaker 1: say if the Senate doesn't convit him, I was acquitted,
Speaker 1: and whether it's too late for him to say it
Speaker 1: to the Oversight Board or not in public, I would
Speaker 1: think that Trump or his supporters are likely to say, listen, Facebook,
Speaker 1: who were you to second guess the Senate of the
Speaker 1: United States? You know, the impeachment if a present is
Speaker 1: it bit like an indictment, then he gets a trial.
Speaker 1: I was tried, I was acquitted. I'm not guilty of incitement,
Speaker 1: and therefore you should reinstate me. At least, That's what
Speaker 1: I would say if I were supporting Donald Trump in
Speaker 1: this in this effort, should the Oversight Board care about that?
Speaker 1: Should it matter at all that there's been a public
Speaker 1: political process prescribed by the Constitution, and if at the
Speaker 1: end of that process it turns out the Trump is
Speaker 1: not removed, does that matter? I think it's really for
Speaker 1: the Oversight Board. I mean, that's why we have them.
Speaker 1: So I actually won't won't give an opinion on that
Speaker 1: because you know how to unduly influence them, or because
Speaker 1: it's not because you don't want to take a stand
Speaker 1: on it. Well, I just don't think. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's really my role. I think the reason we have
Speaker 1: them is because we think they should be able to
Speaker 1: make that sort of decision. Monica, tell me about how,
Speaker 1: maybe a little soon to say this, but how does
Speaker 1: your job and the job of your whole team that
Speaker 1: work on content policy change in a world where there's
Speaker 1: now this oversight board to review the decisions that you
Speaker 1: guys made. How does that affect you when you go
Speaker 1: to work in the mornings. Well, I can just tell
Speaker 1: you my personal reaction to the first slate of decisions,
Speaker 1: which was I was very happy and felt like we
Speaker 1: got clear direction from them. And this is not about
Speaker 1: reinstating three posts that we had removed that we ended
Speaker 1: up reinstating after their decisions. It wasn't about that so
Speaker 1: much as it was about the other guidance they gave
Speaker 1: us about why they thought we had to reinstate these posts,
Speaker 1: and so, for instance, things like you need to provide
Speaker 1: more granular information about your COVID nineteen misinformation policies, or
Speaker 1: you need to it was operational advice about what we
Speaker 1: need to tell people about whether review is automated or
Speaker 1: using human beings. And it was process advice about ensuring
Speaker 1: that people have the ability to be reheard to appeal
Speaker 1: our decisions. That's the kind of guidance that can help
Speaker 1: us know where to invest from an operational standpoint of
Speaker 1: product standpoint. And do you and the company view those
Speaker 1: recommendations as they're a kind of a subtle area, right?
Speaker 1: I mean, the board is empowered to give you non
Speaker 1: binding recommendations. But it's also true that if the board
Speaker 1: makes something necessary to its decision in a case, then
Speaker 1: arguably that would be binding. So how do you figure
Speaker 1: out what it is in a given situation? What we've
Speaker 1: we've and I should say, we're we're going to take
Speaker 1: the we have thirty days under the process that we've devised,
Speaker 1: thirty days to digest the decisions and respond to them publicly,
Speaker 1: and we'll respond to them in newsroom posts. So we'll
Speaker 1: have to look into the specifics of each of their
Speaker 1: recommendations before we have an answer to give on that.
Speaker 1: But more generally, the process we have is if they
Speaker 1: tell us that a specific piece of content should be
Speaker 1: up or down, we will honor that and we will
Speaker 1: implement that right away. And we've done that with the
Speaker 1: decisions that they gave us. If there is other content
Speaker 1: that is identical in terms of what it's saying and
Speaker 1: basically it's in parallel context, it's being used the same way,
Speaker 1: then we will try to find that and make the
Speaker 1: same decisions. So, for instance, if they tell us, hey,
Speaker 1: this particular meme that you this is, I'm making this.
Speaker 1: But if they said this meme that you removed for
Speaker 1: hate speech does not violate and you should reinstate it,
Speaker 1: we might look for other instances where we had removed
Speaker 1: that same meme and say, okay, if it was shared
Speaker 1: without a caption and it was shared in the same way,
Speaker 1: we're going to reinstate that right away. So that's part
Speaker 1: of implementing the binding part of their decisions, the policy
Speaker 1: guidance stuff, including them saying, for instance, you know you
Speaker 1: should look at the comments under a post in your evaluation,
Speaker 1: or you should have an automatic right of appeal to
Speaker 1: a human being to rereview content that is not binding
Speaker 1: on us. You mentioned COVID misinformation as a currently very
Speaker 1: important question, one that the oversight board is already referred to,
Speaker 1: and obviously it takes up a lot of your own
Speaker 1: thinking and time. How broadly speaking, has the company decided
Speaker 1: to think about COVID misinformation And I'm thinking now especially
Speaker 1: about vaccine related misinformation as we head into a period
Speaker 1: where for the moment, there's still a question of getting
Speaker 1: it enough people vaccines who want them, But at some
Speaker 1: point they'll, with any luck, there'll be a shift it
Speaker 1: we'll start wondering about what they call a vaccine hesitancy,
Speaker 1: which does seem to me like a major, major, major euphemism.
Speaker 1: People who don't want to be vaccinated, And if they
Speaker 1: don't want to be vaccinated, that may be on the
Speaker 1: basis of a view of the world that from a
Speaker 1: scientific perspective might be counted as misinformation. So how is
Speaker 1: the company thinking about that? Oh, this is such a
Speaker 1: this is a so difficult and be so important. And
Speaker 1: we've been focused on this since last January, I mean
Speaker 1: since the pandemic first began, and we've been working closely
Speaker 1: with health authorities, most notably probably the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: and the CDC in the US to get their guidance
Speaker 1: on how we should be thinking about and responding to
Speaker 1: COVID misinformation. By the way, misinformation is just part of it.
Speaker 1: We have a number of COVID specific policies. One that's
Speaker 1: that's interesting that maybe we could talk through time is
Speaker 1: what to do with commerce offers to sell masks or
Speaker 1: COVID test kits, especially when there are shortages or when
Speaker 1: things aren't necessarily reliably certified. So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of COVID specific policies, but specifically in the area of misinformation,
Speaker 1: we've developed really a two pronged approach. One is removing
Speaker 1: or down ranking and labeling content that is misleading or inaccurate,
Speaker 1: and then the other prong is really aggressively promoting accurate
Speaker 1: information about the vaccine, about treatments, about the virus itself.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, just to I think we put
Speaker 1: the COVID Information Center. I think we got that going
Speaker 1: in March or maybe earlier of twenty twenty, and we
Speaker 1: have had hundreds of millions of people visit that, which
Speaker 1: is encouraging, and part of that is because we're blasting
Speaker 1: notifications trying to direct people to that center. In fact,
Speaker 1: in just December twenty twenty, we had more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty million people visit that information center. So
Speaker 1: that's one thing we're doing. But as you say, like
Speaker 1: actually responding in the moment to misinformation that shared on
Speaker 1: the platform is also really really important, and so we
Speaker 1: are removing and this is criteria that we've worked up
Speaker 1: with health organizations. We're removing content that falls into a
Speaker 1: number of categories where if somebody believed it, it would
Speaker 1: contribute to the risk of that person would get COVID
Speaker 1: or would spread the virus. So, for instance, false statements,
Speaker 1: false claims about the disease being no worse than the flu,
Speaker 1: or the virus doesn't really exist, or poor people are
Speaker 1: immune from it, they can't get it, or five G
Speaker 1: causes covid all of them. What about their people who
Speaker 1: say What about someone who says, I just don't believe
Speaker 1: these vaccines will work and I believe they'll do harm
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to take them. That's something we
Speaker 1: would allow. If somebody says I personally and then they're
Speaker 1: giving their their own experience, we would generally allow that.
Speaker 1: If they are saying something as a statement, so something
Speaker 1: like you know, I've I've looked at it, the vaccines
Speaker 1: don't work, or the vaccines cause in fertility, or did
Speaker 1: you see this study or this article, and then they're
Speaker 1: signing something that is inaccurate, we would remove that. What
Speaker 1: gets really tricky, and this is sort of where your
Speaker 1: comment goes. What gets tricky is statements of personal questioning
Speaker 1: or personal testimonials. So let's say somebody says, I just
Speaker 1: got the first vaccine shot. I've never been this sick.
Speaker 1: It's really really horrible. If I had it to do
Speaker 1: all over again, I don't think I would have gotten it.
Speaker 1: What do you do with that? That's just a person
Speaker 1: stating his or her own opinion. What about somebody stating
Speaker 1: facts like my sister got the vaccine on Monday. On Wednesday,
Speaker 1: she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. With everybody, with the
Speaker 1: high number of people get vaccinated, some people are going
Speaker 1: to have heart attacks the next day, not because of
Speaker 1: the vaccine, but because they were always going to have
Speaker 1: a heart attack on Tuesday. And so it goes further
Speaker 1: than that. There will be some people I don't know further,
Speaker 1: but the hope be cases of people who get vaccinated
Speaker 1: and then the next day have COVID because they were
Speaker 1: infected before they got the vaccine. I mean, that's going
Speaker 1: to happen to some people, right. So that's one of
Speaker 1: the tricky questions for us. How do we deal with
Speaker 1: it's sort of testimonial content, and what's your approach been
Speaker 1: with personal testimonials, we generally allow it. I mean, if
Speaker 1: it looks like if we see a case where it
Speaker 1: looks like somebody is intentionally trying to scirt the policies,
Speaker 1: maybe this is a financially motivated actor, or maybe this
Speaker 1: is somebody who is generally sharing conspiracy theories and there's
Speaker 1: something more going on there, we might take a different approach.
Speaker 1: But if this is just a regular person who is
Speaker 1: sharing a personal experience, our general policy is to allow it.
Speaker 1: There's an in between approach too, so we remove content
Speaker 1: where we think it can contribute to the spread of
Speaker 1: the virus, and that is there are all different kinds
Speaker 1: of claims that fall into that, but it's generally stuff
Speaker 1: about diminishing the seriousness of the virus, or saying that
Speaker 1: there are cures that there aren't, or discrediting the vaccines.
Speaker 1: But then there is also content that we demote, meaning
Speaker 1: it won't get the same distribution on Facebook, and we
Speaker 1: put labels on it that direct people to that COVID
Speaker 1: Information center, and that will include content like the vaccine
Speaker 1: is man made, this is all a big conspiracy, and
Speaker 1: there there's not so much a safety risk, but we
Speaker 1: do want to make sure that people are actually getting
Speaker 1: accurate information about the virus. So just to basically put
Speaker 1: some numbers on it, since March, and I think these
Speaker 1: numbers go through maybe October, we removed about twelve million
Speaker 1: posts for COVID misinformation, and I think since then in December,
Speaker 1: I think we've removed maybe just over four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: such posts. So that kind of gives you the general
Speaker 1: idea of scale. And then in terms of the demoting
Speaker 1: and labeling content that where there's not a safety risk
Speaker 1: but it's still widely debunked misinformation, it's more than one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty million posts in that same timeframe that
Speaker 1: we've labeled, so as a proportion, it's almost it's more
Speaker 1: than ten times as much down ranking or labeling compared
Speaker 1: to removing content. I want to ask you about the
Speaker 1: future of content moderation in that way. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you see is that characteristic of where you see your
Speaker 1: whole field going I mean, is there going to be
Speaker 1: more and more and more and more down ranking and
Speaker 1: labeling rather than removal or an addition to removal, or
Speaker 1: do you think those numbers are likely to remain relatively
Speaker 1: stable going forward in terms of the ratio when it
Speaker 1: comes to misinformation, I think I think labeling will become
Speaker 1: more and more important. Now. Facebook already does it quite broadly.
Speaker 1: We've done this since twenty seventeen. We work with more
Speaker 1: than eighty fact checking partners. Not just on COVID misinformation,
Speaker 1: this is on misinformation about any topic. If it's going
Speaker 1: viral and a fact checking agency that we work with
Speaker 1: wants to fact check it, then they can label it
Speaker 1: and we will down rank it and we will apply
Speaker 1: the label to it. That's something that we already do
Speaker 1: quite broadly. But I think this is an approach that
Speaker 1: you're starting to see some of the other platforms get into.
Speaker 1: In fact, you saw it and they run up to
Speaker 1: the election, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's if
Speaker 1: it's something that maybe increases in its importance an important tool.
Speaker 1: One of the criticisms that I've heard a lot, sometimes
Speaker 1: directed at the oversight poort, but more broadly directed against
Speaker 1: content moderation is that in a sense, it's all very
Speaker 1: well and good. Everyone says, it's good that you're doing that,
Speaker 1: it's nice that the Facebook wants to do that. But
Speaker 1: if the biggest, deepest social cost associate with Facebook is
Speaker 1: people finding themselves in algorithmic bubbles where they mostly hear
Speaker 1: what is referred to them by their friends, their family,
Speaker 1: people of like mind, and if that, if that drives polarization.
Speaker 1: And these are very controversial claims, but I'm ventriloquizeing what
Speaker 1: critics often say. Then they say, you know, isn't it
Speaker 1: just sort of a band aid to say we're taking
Speaker 1: down the worst content or we're down ranking content that
Speaker 1: we don't especially like. The strong form of the criticism
Speaker 1: would say, all of the tools that you've placed in
Speaker 1: content moderation or in content and policy, those should go
Speaker 1: to the very fundamental question of what the company allows
Speaker 1: to be seen in the first place. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: the news feed that Facebook produces should come under the
Speaker 1: auspices of content policy, you know, should be similarly not
Speaker 1: just checked for misinformation but which it is, of course,
Speaker 1: but more broadly, should be part of a process of
Speaker 1: trying to curate material in a way that minimizes polarization.
Speaker 1: And obviously that's not the world that we live in now,
Speaker 1: but it's a normative vision of how things could evolve
Speaker 1: or develop in the future. When you hear that kind
Speaker 1: of criticism, how do you tend to react to it. Well.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things I think that points
Speaker 1: to is the power of us directing people to authoritative information, which,
Speaker 1: like I said, the numbers that actually are very good.
Speaker 1: We have a COVID information center, we had a voting
Speaker 1: information center before the US election. We're building other information centers,
Speaker 1: and what we're seeing is people actually do visit these
Speaker 1: when they are directed to them in the moment, and
Speaker 1: so that's something that I think can be effective against polarization.
Speaker 1: For instance, in the run up to the election, we
Speaker 1: were directing people very broadly, not just when there was
Speaker 1: something false, but when people were discussing election related topics.
Speaker 1: We were saying, get the facts here and pointing them
Speaker 1: to a bipartisan, accurate set of resources. So I do
Speaker 1: think that's important. The other thing I would say is
Speaker 1: because of the headlines and because of the understandable focus
Speaker 1: on the election recently, I think there's a misperception that
Speaker 1: Facebook is all about news or politics, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the news content, the percentage of Facebook content that is
Speaker 1: related to the news is very very small. I think
Speaker 1: it's less than five percent, and so when you think
Speaker 1: about polarization going up, and I think there are some
Speaker 1: studies out there that show this polarization has been increasing
Speaker 1: politically in the United States for decades, and there are
Speaker 1: many reasons for that. So it will not be enough
Speaker 1: for social media companies alone to say, well, we're going
Speaker 1: to take this one approach. This is something that we
Speaker 1: have to work on as a broader society. A last question, Monica,
Speaker 1: and again this comes from skeptics. They'll say, well, look,
Speaker 1: the oversight board is great, but it's only going to
Speaker 1: hear a handful of cases. What about all the other
Speaker 1: cases where every day Facebook is making decisions about content
Speaker 1: posted by users who get a lot of engagement, including
Speaker 1: people whose values and views might threaten the content policy standards.
Speaker 1: How do you assure or try to assure the general
Speaker 1: public that the company's profit incentive, which goes alongside engagement,
Speaker 1: is not enough to overcome the counteracting principle of enforcement
Speaker 1: that you and your team are are charged with implementing.
Speaker 1: I guess the skeptical way of putting it would be,
Speaker 1: it's nice that the oversight board will oversee you some
Speaker 1: of the time, but why should the rest of the
Speaker 1: world trust you when the oversight board isn't looking I
Speaker 1: guess I have two answers to that, and one is
Speaker 1: sort of a personal perspective, which is I've been in
Speaker 1: this job now for eight years or so, and what
Speaker 1: it looks like is my team of a couple hundred
Speaker 1: people coming together with experts on speech and safety from
Speaker 1: around the world and crafting a set of standards which
Speaker 1: we then apply with thousands of content moderators that use
Speaker 1: the rules and the guidance that we give them. It
Speaker 1: is not dictated by concerns about revenue or you know,
Speaker 1: I can't for instance, when we're when we're designing our policies,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't talk to people on the sales
Speaker 1: team about how that would affect revenue. That's not part
Speaker 1: of what goes into this, and so that's that's one
Speaker 1: personal assurance I would give. But in terms of the
Speaker 1: oversight Board's role on this, I think, yes, it's true,
Speaker 1: they're only going to hear a small number of cases.
Speaker 1: And even if we double the size of the oversight board,
Speaker 1: you know, we make millions of decisions every week, so
Speaker 1: the oversight board is not going to be able to
Speaker 1: hear a significant percentage of those cases. But the decisions
Speaker 1: that we saw them make have an effect in flagging
Speaker 1: for us the broader concerns. It's not just about reinstating
Speaker 1: a piece of content, Like I said, their guidance was
Speaker 1: much more around what kind of notice has to be provided,
Speaker 1: what kind of process has to be provided, and those
Speaker 1: that's the sort of guidance that will indeed lead to
Speaker 1: us thinking about bigger questions that will affect all of
Speaker 1: our users. Monica, thank you for taking us under the hood.
Speaker 1: It's a complicated engine in there. We will look forward
Speaker 1: to seeing what the oversight board does in the Trumps
Speaker 1: suspension case. I myself, while looking forward to with bated breath,
Speaker 1: I mean I am about as far from the capacity
Speaker 1: to be objective about the oversight part is it's possible
Speaker 1: for me to be about anything apart maybe from my
Speaker 1: actual children. But on the other hand, the oversight port
Speaker 1: is in fact totally independent now and independent not only
Speaker 1: of Facebook, but certainly independent of me, and so I
Speaker 1: myself I'm watching with fascination and not a little terror
Speaker 1: to see it, to see how it all comes out. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, and thanks for the conversation. I
Speaker 1: always learn so much when I'm speaking to Monica. The
Speaker 1: truth is that we never really ask what happens behind
Speaker 1: the scenes at the big social media platforms when speech,
Speaker 1: whether that of an ordinary person or of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: is left up or taking down. Where Monica lives professionally
Speaker 1: is an epicenter of a new form of power. It's
Speaker 1: the power to decide who is heard. It's also the
Speaker 1: power to amplify or decelerate the trajectory of information as
Speaker 1: its heads through the world. This is a crucial historical
Speaker 1: moment for the governance of content on social media, for
Speaker 1: what content is allowed to remain and what content is
Speaker 1: taken down. We are witnessing a deep interpenetration of how
Speaker 1: the president's words and speech play out in the realm
Speaker 1: of government as in the impeachment, and how they play
Speaker 1: out in the realm of communication across social media as
Speaker 1: we see with respect to Trump's suspensions, the outcomes of
Speaker 1: each are going to matter for the way we think
Speaker 1: about free expression in the United States and the world.
Speaker 1: And when the Oversight Board reaches its decision about Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: I will come back to you here on deep background
Speaker 1: with a possibility of further discussion and conversation. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'm watching the impeachment trial as closely as I know
Speaker 1: how I better be, because I'm on TV almost every
Speaker 1: night this week trying to offer an opinion about it.
Speaker 1: I'm sparing my Deep Background listeners those comments for the moment,
Speaker 1: but as the trial develops, if important things come up
Speaker 1: that we think are relevant to our listeners, I promise
Speaker 1: to come back to them in the very near future.
Speaker 1: Until the next time I speak to you, be careful,
Speaker 1: be safe, and be well. Deep Background is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mo laboord, our
Speaker 1: engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and our shore runner is Sophie
Speaker 1: Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by
Speaker 1: Luis Guerra at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Lydia Jean Cott, Heather Faine, Carly mcgliori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion,
Speaker 1: which you can find at Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman.
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