Facebook has said that they will proactively ban content that could misrepresent the nature and parameters of the upcoming 2020 United States census. Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a statement on Sunday, “We’re going to treat next year’s census like an election — with people, policies and technology in place to protect against census interference.”
Sandberg, who recently donated $1 million to the political arm of Planned Parenthood, further stated that the social media giant will enforce their standards using artificial intelligence to remove content that could spread falsehoods about the census that could discourage certain people from participating. They will also forge partnerships with “non-partisan” groups as part of an initiative to promote total participation in the census. A recent Supreme Court decision has left the debate over whether or not there would be a question on the 2020 census about citizenship in flux.
The statement was part of a broader response to audits Facebook regularly receives in the wake of criticism that they don’t do enough to stop hate speech content from appearing on their site. Facebook leans heavily on outsourced moderators to police the enormous amount of content pouring into their site. According to a recent report, these moderators are frequently underpaid, and over-taxed both physically and emotionally. Three former employees described horrific working conditions. Facebook has previously announced plans to install an oversight board to assist in more controversial decisions being made by the moderators.
The COO also announced the formal establishment of a civil rights task force that includes senior employees from several different departments in the company. She said the task force will primarily “onboard civil rights expertise to ensure it is effective in addressing areas like content policy, fairness in artificial intelligence, privacy, and elections. For example, we will work with voting rights experts to make sure key members of our election team are trained on trends in voter intimidation and suppression so they can remove this content from Facebook more effectively.”
