Zuckerberg confronted with Facebook’s anti Muslim issue

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the hearing, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, and Chris Coons all asked Zuckerberg about Facebook’s anti-Muslim problem.

Previously, Sen. Coons and 14 other senators also sent Zuckerberg a letter asking him to address anti-Muslim hate on Facebook. Muslim Advocates supported the senators on the letter.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Coons also specifically asked Zuckerberg about Facebook’s failure to enforce a call to arms policy regarding a local militia’s Facebook event page in Kenosha, WI—as reported by BuzzFeed News.

In response to Sen. Coons, Zuckerberg indicated that the Kenosha Guard event page did not violate the call to arms policy.

He also said some calls to arms on Facebook are “context-specific” and require a higher level of expertise and said not all reviewers have that expertise. The following is a response from Muslim Advocates Executive Director Farhana Khera:

“Mark Zuckerberg was evasive and misleading at best when responding to Sen. Coons’s question about Facebook’s failure to enforce its call to arms policy in Kenosha.

Facebook’s call to arms policy requires content reviewers to escalate complaints about a call to arms to experts. Zuckerberg himself said to Coons that ‘some of these [calls to arms] are context-specific and just require a higher level of context and expertise in the area to enforce.’

The problem in Kenosha, and what Zuckerberg did not address at the hearing, was that the reviewers never escalated complaints about the call to arms there because they were never instructed to do so. This possibly helped contribute to violence and a loss of life.

Zuckerberg’s non-answer is more proof that there is no mechanism at Facebook to ensure that the call to arms policy can actually function as he says it should.

Even more importantly, Zuckerberg has now suddenly indicated that the Kenosha Guard event page did not violate the call to arms policy.

This is a direct contradiction of what Facebook has communicated to civil rights advocates and of a fair reading of the policy itself.

Facebook’s constantly changing explanations of why the policy failed and how it even works adds further evidence that the company isn’t serious about creating policies that will actually protect our safety and security.”

For more than half a decade, Muslim Advocates has worked to hold Facebook accountable for the anti-Muslim hate and violence enabled by the platform.

This work includes helping lead the call for the company to undergo an independent civil rights audit and releasing a report documenting Facebook’s global anti-Muslim problem.

Muslim Advocates is a national civil rights organization working in the courts, in the halls of power, and in communities to halt bigotry in its tracks.

We ensure that American Muslims have a seat at the table with expert representation so that all Americans may live free from hate and discrimination.

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.
FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking