Return to Recognizing Hate Speech: Antisemitism On Facebook

Recommendations Regarding Antisemitism

#		Recommendation		Page
1		OHPI calls on Facebook to recognise the symbolism of Anne Frank in relation to the Holocaust and to commit to educating all review staff to recognise her picture and to remove memes that make use of it.		12
2		OHPI calls on Facebook to recognise the use of Nazi Symbolism with reference to the State of Israel or Jewish people collectively or individually as a form of hate speech.		12
3		OHPI calls on Facebook to recognise calls for Israel’s destruction as a form of hate speech and to remove them from the platform.		12
4		OHPI calls on Facebook to adopt the Working Definition of Antisemitism from the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU as a tool to assist in the recognition of antisemitism.		12
5		OHPI calls on Facebook to immediately remove all pages about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, starting with those listed in this report.		13
6		OHPI calls on Facebook to educate their review staff so that in future they can recognise the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as antisemitic hate speech and correctly respond to future reports related to similar content.		13

 

General Recommendations

#		Recommendation		Page
7		OHPI calls on Facebook to establish constructive channels of dialogue for experts, and to use these channels to improve its recognition of hate speech. This should be part of a learning process for Facebook and not simply a process to remove specific items of content or resolve specific complaints. The process should be open to any expert able to demonstrate their competence.		13
8		OHPI recommends that the following factors be used to determine how well an online platform is removing online hate: How easily users can report content How quickly the platform responds to user reports How accurately the platform responds to reports How well the platform recognises and learns from mistakes in its initial response How well the platform mitigates against repeat offenders (and specifically including those operating across multiple accounts) How well the platform mitigates against repeated posting of the same hate speech by different people		15
9		OHPI recommends Facebook review its reporting facilities in a holistic manner.		15
10		OHPI recommends the ‘Support Dashboard’ be improved with the inclusion of a unique ID number that is visibly assigned to each complaint. We also recommend that users be asked to enter a description, for their own records, of the image or page they are complaining about. This would make the ‘dashboard’ more useful in the cases where Facebook does remove content. Users need positive feedback to see the system works.		15
11		OHPI recommends that in the case of hate speech targeting a group, reports of pages be prioritised above reports of comments or images.		15
12		OHPI again calls on Facebook to implement a quality control process to systematically review the assessments of front line review staff on a random basis.		15
13		OHPI recommends Facebook prioritise complaints against pages where the IP address of one of the administrators has been used by an account that was an administrator to any other page Facebook has suspended within the previous 3 months. To further assist with this, we recommend Facebook ban known proxy servers from accessing the administer features of pages.		15
14		OHPI recommends Facebook automatically check any flagged images against a database of previously upheld complaints and where a very close match is determined the content should be removed automatically and immediately and without the need for human review.		16

 

Further details about the report and a link to download a copy can be accessed here.