Tech giant won’t back down as it faces TDs
Consultation with law enforcement
FACEBOOK will continue to allow videos of child abuse, children fighting each other and animal cruelty on its site despite the outcry over the recent Channel 4 exposé, an Oireachtas committee will learn today.
In a submission to TDs and senators, Facebook will also attempt to shift blame for the practices exposed in the documentary on outsourced workers belonging to Irish firm CPL.
Despite Facebook reiterating previous apologies for the ‘deeply disturbing’ footage in the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, mem- bers of the Oireachtas Communications committee will learn from the firm’s opening statement that:
Videos of violent child abuse will still be published on the site. Such videos will only be removed if Facebook learns the child in question has been rescued by police;
Facebook ‘can’ report such vidoes to law enforcment – but the statement makes no commitment that it will do so in every case;
Videos of children fighting each other will remain on the site if they include a caption condemning the violence – exactly the same as policy prior to the Dispatches programme;
These violent schoolchild assault videos will not be taken down if a member of the public or a charity complains: that will only be done if the victim themselves or their parents complain;
Facebook is still not making any effort to verify the age of new users, despite claiming that you have to be 13 to sign up to the service.
Two Facebook executives are to be questioned at today’s special committee meeting: Niamh Sweeney who is the head of public policy for Facebook Ireland and Siobhán Cummiskey, who is Facebook’s head of content policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In her opening submission distributed to committee members yesterday, Ms Sweeney says that she, Ms Cummiskey and other staff were ‘upset by what came to light in the programme, and we fully understand why you wanted to meet with us here today’.
However the document itself reveals no substantive changes in policy regarding the videos which horrified viewiers of the Dispatches documentary.
The opening statement makes no mention whatsoever of a video of a man eating live baby rats, which was justified by the firm’s moderators on the basis that it was a video showing live animals being consumed ‘for feeding purposes’.
Ms Sweeney refers to how the documentary highlighted a video published on Facebook in which a three-year-old child is brutally assaulted by an adult. She says the video should have been removed, but not because it was horrific, violent and deeply offensive... but because the child and the perpetrator were identified in 2012.
She said that Facebook policy was only to remove such videos ‘if the child in question has been rescued.’
Ms Sweeney said that if the child in question has not been rescued, such videos can be circulated all over the platform – though with a warning screen for users. Facebook will also limit the distribution of such videos ‘to only those who are 18 years of age or older’, she adds. However, as Facebook does not verify users’ ages, this could mean millions of children are able to watch such materialon the platform.
Ms Sweeney also claims that there is a ‘narrow set of circumstances’ under which such a child abuse video can be shared. This happens where the child is still at risk ‘and there is a chance the child and perpetrator could be identified to law enforcement as a result of awareness being raised’. However while the document says that Facebook ‘can’ inform the police, there is no commitment to do so.
The statement also fails to address why such videos are not immediately removed, with the details of who posted them reported to the police – who could then, if required, ask Facebook to distribute edited images from the violent film in order to help identify the abuser or the child.
In Facebook’s only concession on the issue, Ms Sweeney says the firm has begun a ‘consultation process’ with welfare groups and law enforcement ‘to decide if it is appropriate to continue with our policy of allowing these videos on our platform’.
Ms Sweeney’s statement also claims that ‘much’ of the shocking Dispatches footage did not accurately reflect Facebook’s policies or values.’
‘Dispatches identified some areas where we have failed, and Siobhán and I are here today to reiterate our apology for those failings’ she will say.
However, Ms Sweeney appears to shift the blame for some of the documentary’s most shocking revelations to staff belonging to CPL, which provides outsourced content moderators for Facebook.
Ms Sweeney’s opening statement also says the company does not allow people under the age of 13 to open a Facebook account, but the statement fails to address the lack of any verification checks to ensure children are being honest about their age when doing so.