Facebook announced a series of new measures it will adopt that it hopes will show it is making progress scrubbing hate speech from the social network. But, in what is becoming a familiar back-and-forth, civil rights groups say the company still falls short of meeting its demands in a brand boycott that is growing by the day.
On Monday, Facebook posted the new steps it would take that address one of the demands of the protesters, that the social network allows more independent oversight of how offensive content spreads. Facebook announced it would undergo an "external audit on our content moderation systems."
“We’re reaching out to key stakeholders spanning government regulators, civil society, and the advertising industry as this is designed,” Facebook said in the post. “This separate third-party audit will be completed by a reputable firm and include the incidence of violating content.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the organizations behind the movement to freeze advertising, said that Monday’s update did not address enough of the groups’ issues. The groups, which have called their campaign “Stop Hate for Profit,” have 10 demands, including third-party audits; more human moderation; and more assurances for brands that ads do not appear alongside offensive content.
“This just shows that Facebook isn’t willing to make meaningful change yet,” Greenblatt said in an email response to Facebook. “They have essentially answered 'no' to all 10 recommended next steps.”