Electronic Frontier Foundation, 70 other groups want Facebook to offer users ‘due process’ for takedowns

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and over 70 other groups have asked Facebook to adopt a clearer “due process” system for content takedowns. An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg urges him to enact the Santa Clara Principles, a series of moderation guidelines that academics and nonprofits put forward earlier in 2018. “Civil society groups around the globe have criticized the way that Facebook’s Community Standards exhibit bias and are unevenly applied across different languages and cultural contexts,” the letter says. “Offering a remedy mechanism, as well as more transparency, will go a long way toward supporting user expression.”

The Santa Clara Principles include a clear explanation for why a post or profile violates Facebook’s rules; an accessible appeals system that includes review by a human moderator; and regular transparency reports that detail how much content has been taken down, as well as how many cases were successfully appealed. They’re intended to outline the minimum standards of good platform moderation, encouraging companies to balance the rights of individual users with the need to remove harmful material.