“Dear Mark Zuckerberg:

What do the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a Danish member of parliament, and a news anchor from the Philippines have in common? They have all been subject to a misapplication of Facebook’s Community Standards. But unlike the average user, each of these individuals and entities received media attention, were able to reach Facebook staff and, in some cases, receive an apology and have their content restored. For most users, content that Facebook removes is rarely restored and some users may be banned from the platform even in the event of an error.”

This is how the open letter to Facebook’s CEO from the part of 80 organizations worldwide begins. Among them are the most prominent digital rights organizations. From the part of Greece, the letter was signed by Homo Digitalis.

With this letter, we asked Facebook:

– To create and implement a mechanism through which the users of the platform will be able to appeal against content moderation decisions,

– to re-review the content, which has been removed, by a human, rather than an algorithm, when an appeal is launched against such removal,

– to give clear, detailed and personalized justifications to each user regarding the reasons why his/her content was removed,

– to inform the user on his/her right to appeal such a decision, 

– to publish regularly transparency reports regarding the implementation of its Community Standards.

With more than 2 billion users, Facebook is the biggest communication platform worldwide. It is normal for some of the decisions regarding content moderation taken either by Artificial Intelligence systems or by the human personnel, to be wrong.

The users must be safeguarded from such potential faults and must have the right to request re-review when their content has been removed.

The full letter can be found here.