Facebook policy allows ‘certain forms’ of violence to be published

Facebook permits certain forms of violence to be published on its platform and does not allow public figures the “full protection” of its bullying policies, the company’s head of content policy for Europe has said.

Siobhán Cummiskey told a Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children and Youth Affairs hearing on cyber security that Facebook allowed “certain forms of what we would call violence in order for people to raise awareness about a particular issue”.

“If the person who’s depicted in the video reported it themselves than we would remove that,” Ms Cummiskey said.

Responding to committee chairman Alan Farrell TD (Fine Gael) and Sinn Féin TD Denise Mitchell, Ms Cummiskey said that if a fighting video was shared and people commented on it “mocking or degrading” a person involved, Facebook would remove the video.

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Ms Mitchell said fighting videos were not “about raising awareness, this is kids being jumped on, on their way home from school”.

“That’s the stuff I’m concerned about,” she said.

Julie de Bailliencou, head of safety policy for Europe, the Middle East and Asia at Facebook, said “very simply we would remove this”.

Graphic violence

Ms Cummiskey noted that Facebook had a graphic violence policy which does not allow the worst forms of violent content to be posted.

“That policy states that there are instances where videos or photographs of people being hit or assaulted in certain circumstances, if you think about Syria or other places where they’re aren’t journalists on the ground, the only way for them to get out information for people who are being assaulted or injured or killed is to do so through social media.”

The committee also heard there are “different standards” when it comes to public figures being bullied on Facebook and that women in the public eye are more likely to be targeted for abuse.

Ms Cummiskey said when it comes to public figures, “we do allow more robust speech around public figures and matters of the public interest”.

“Our bullying policy is so expansive that if we were to give that protection [to public figures] you wouldn’t be able to make a meme about the president of the country or the prime minister of a country,” she said.

“You wouldn’t be able to engage in the type of the freedom of expression that we see in newspapers, in caricatures, in things like that.”

Ms Cummiskey added that Facebook takes a “very hard line on hate speech” regardless if someone is the president or an ordinary person.

Better policing

Fine Gael Senator Catherine Noone said abuse towards public figures “should be policed in a better manner”.

She asked if Facebook thought it was acceptable for “a public figure or any figure” to be told by someone that they hoped they were “raped”.

“You talk about mental health, but what about people that work in this space, what about our mental health,” she added. “I think we have lost the run of ourselves on social media in that we get away with using that kind of language...You’re the platform, you have to do something about it.”

Niamh Sweeney, head of public policy for Facebook Ireland, said “we don’t think it’s acceptable and we have a zero tolerance policy to any kind of rape comments”.

“The difficulty we have is that people can curse online, they can use all sorts of language that people don’t find palatable, that people don’t find polite,” she said.

The committee heard that Facebook receives tens of millions of reports regarding pieces of content every week from all over the world.

The representatives said reports related to suicide, self-harm, credible threats, child safety or bullying are prioritised with the majority of reports reviewed within 24 hours.