Censorship by Facebook
Facebook has been involved in multiple controversies involving censorship of content, removing or omitting information from its services in order to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws.
This article is about censorship by Facebook itself. For censorship of Facebook by governments and organizations, see Censorship of Facebook.Anti-immigrant speech[edit]
In Germany, Facebook actively censors anti-immigrant speech, claiming they are reviewing posts more stringently and using legal opinions and language experts to determine whether users' comments are infringing on German law.[1][2][3]
In May 2016, Facebook and other technology companies agreed to a new "code of conduct" by the European Commission to review hateful online content within 24 hours of being notified, and subsequently remove such content if necessary.[4][5][6] A year later, Reuters reported that the European Union had approved proposals to make Facebook and other technology companies tackle hate speech content on their platforms, but that a final agreement in the European Parliament is needed to make the proposals into law.[7][8] In June 2017, the European Commission praised Facebook's efforts in fighting hateful content, having reviewed "nearly 58 percent of flagged content within 24 hours".[9][10]
Climate change[edit]
Facebook has censored several posts related to climate change.[12][13] It uses the group Climate Feedback for its fact-checking related to climate change.[14]
Competing social networks[edit]
In October 2018, Facebook and Facebook Messenger was said to be blocking urls to Minds, a social network website that is a competitor of Facebook.[22] Users have complained that Facebook marks links to Facebook's competitor as "insecure" and have to fill a captcha to share it with other users. In 2015, Facebook was accused of banning rival network Tsu in a similar manner.[23]
Conservative news[edit]
In May 2016, Facebook was accused by a former employee of leaving out conservative topics from the trending bar.[24] Although Facebook denied these allegations, the site planned to improve the trending bar.[25]
In August 2018, Facebook deleted videos posted to it by PragerU. Facebook later reversed its decision and restored the PragerU content, saying that PragerU content was falsely reported to have hate speech.[26][27]
As a result of perception that conservatives are not treated neutrally on Facebook, alternative social media platforms have been established.[28] This perception has led to a reduction of trust in Facebook, and reduction of usage by those who consider themselves to be conservative.[29]
In July 2020, Congressman Matt Gaetz filed a criminal referral against Facebook citing that evidence produced by Project Veritas demonstrated that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had made materially false statements to Congress while under oath in hearings which occurred in April 2018.[30][31] Congressman Gaetz claimed that the evidence provided demonstrated that Zuckerberg's claims that the website did not engage in bias against conservative speech were false.[30]
COVID-19 vaccines[edit]
Facebook has been accused of censoring several posts related to COVID-19 vaccines. In October 2020, Facebook is said to have censored a claim the COVID-19 vaccines were imminent.[12] On 2 November 2021, The BMJ published a piece by journalist Paul D. Thacker alleging there has been "poor practice" at Ventavia, one of the companies involved in the phase III evaluation trials of the Pfizer vaccine.[32][33] The BMJ sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg explaining that "from November 10, readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share our article. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their posts flagged with a warning about "Missing context ... Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people." Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share "false information" might have their posts moved lower in Facebook's News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were "partly false." Readers were directed to a "fact check" performed by a Facebook contractor named Lead Stories.".[34][35]
Search function[edit]
Facebook's search function has been accused of preventing users from searching for certain terms. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has written about Facebook's possible censorship of "Ron Paul" as a search term. MoveOn.org's Facebook group for organizing protests against privacy violations could for a time not be found by searching. The very word privacy was also restricted.[48]
Censorship of editorial content[edit]
On February 4, 2010, a number of Facebook groups against the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) were removed without any reason given.[63] The DAB is one of the largest pro-Beijing political parties in Hong Kong. The affected groups have since been restored.
Censorship on the Kashmir freedom movement[edit]
In 2016, Facebook banned and also removed content regarding the Kashmir dispute, triggering a response from The Guardian, BBC and other media groups on Facebook's policies on censorship.[64][65] Facebook censorship policies have been criticized especially after the company banned the posts about the Indian army's attack on protesters, including children, with pellet guns.[66] A human rights group superimposed pellet injuries similar to those inflicted on Kashmiri people on the faces of popular Indian actors, famous people including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a response, which went viral.[67][68]
Censorship in line with US foreign policy[edit]
In October 2021, a secret blacklist of "dangerous individuals and organizations" maintained by Facebook was discovered by The Intercept, which revealed censorship in the MENA region was stricter than in USA.[71][72] Critics and scholars have argued the blacklist and the guideline stifles free discussion, as well as enforcing an uneven enforcement of the rules.[73][72]