An internal Facebook document reveals that the social media giant monitors its users' offline behavior as part of how the company determines whether a person should be classified as a "Hate Agent," according to Breitbart's Allum Bokhari who has reviewed the document.
Titled "Hate Agent Policy Review," the document reveals that Facebook employs a series of "signals" which include a person's behavior both on and off the platform. Once determined to be a "hate agent," a person is banned from the platform.
If you praise the wrong individual, interview them, or appear at events alongside them, Facebook may categorize you as a “hate agent.”Facebook may also categorize you as a hate agent if you self-identify with or advocate for a “Designated Hateful Ideology,” if you associate with a “Designated Hate Entity” (one of the examples cited by Facebook as a “hate entity” includes Islam critic Tommy Robinson), or if you have “tattoos of hate symbols or hate slogans.” (The document cites no examples of these, but the media and “anti-racism” advocacy groups increasingly label innocuous items as “hate symbols,” including a cartoon frog and the “OK” hand sign.)Facebook will also categorize you as a hate agent for possession of “hate paraphernalia,” although the document provides no examples of what falls into this category. -Breitbart
Facebook may even brand someone a hate agent for "statements made in private but later made public," according to the report.
This piece by @LibertarianBlue is insane.@Facebook monitors your OFFLINE behavior to decide if you're a "Hate Agent" via:— Dennis Williams (@RealDennisWill) June 14, 2019
— who you were seen with
— comments about immigration
— your tattoos
— if you are NEUTRAL about someone
— things you say IN PRIVATEhttps://t.co/qXnWyRkFOp
Bokhari also notes from his previous reports that Facebook categorized right-wing pundit Paul Joseph Watson as "hateful" in part because he interviewed British activist Tommy Robinson on his YouTube channel. Similarly, prominent conservatives Candace Owens and Brigitte Gabrielare on the list, along with UK politicians Marie Waters and Carl Benjamin.
The Benjamin addition reveals that Facebook may categorize you as a hate agent merely for speaking neutrally about individuals and organizations that the social network considers hateful. In the document, Facebook tags Benjamin with a “hate agent” signal for “neutral representation of John Kinsman, member of Proud Boys” on October 21 last year.
A new report by The Intercept has unearthed some stunning quotes from Facebook's lawyers as the controversial social media giant recently battled litigation in California courts related to the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal. The report notes that statements from Facebook's counsel "reveal one of the most stunning examples of corporate doublespeak certainly in Facebook’s history" concerning privacy and individual users' rights.
Contrary to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's last testimony before Congress which included the vague promise, “We believe that everyone around the world deserves good privacy controls,” the latest courtroom statements expose in shockingly unambiguous terms that Facebook actually sees privacy as legally "nonexistent" — to use The Intercept's apt description of what's in the courtroom transcript — up until now largely ignored in media commentary.
The courtroom debate was first reported by Law360, and captures the transcribed back and forth between Facebook lawyer Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and US District Judge Vince Chhabria.
The Intercept cites multiple key sections of the transcript from the May 29, 2019 court proceedings showing Snyder arguing essentially something the complete opposite of Zuckerberg's public statements on data privacy, specifically, on the idea that users have any reasonable expectation of privacy at all.
Facebook's lawyer argued:
There is no privacy interest, because by sharing with a hundred friends on a social media platform, which is an affirmative social act to publish, to disclose, to share ostensibly private information with a hundred people, you have just, under centuries of common law, under the judgment of Congress, under the SCA, negated any reasonable expectation of privacy.
As The Intercept commented of the blunt remarks, "So not only is it Facebook’s legal position that you’re not entitled to any expectation of privacy, but it’s your fault that the expectation went poof the moment you started using the site (or at least once you connected with 100 Facebook “friends”)."
Judge Chhabria took issue with the "binary" nature of Facebook's conception of privacy in stating, “like either you have a full expectation of privacy, or you have no expectation of privacy at all,” and put the following scenario to Facebook's legal team:
If I share [information] with ten people, that doesn’t eliminate my expectation of privacy. It might diminish it, but it doesn’t eliminate it. And if I share something with ten people on the understanding that the entity that is helping me share it will not further disseminate it to a thousand companies, I don’t understand why I don’t have — why that’s not a violation of my expectation of privacy.
Snyder's response was illuminating regarding Facebook's approach to users' privacy:
Let me give you a hypothetical of my own. I go into a classroom and invite a hundred friends. This courtroom. I invite a hundred friends, I rent out the courtroom, and I have a party. And I disclose — And I disclose something private about myself to a hundred people, friends and colleagues. Those friends then rent out a 100,000-person arena, and they rebroadcast those to 100,000 people. I have no cause of action because by going to a hundred people and saying my private truths, I have negated any reasonable expectation of privacy, because the case law is clear.
And a another key question from what appeared an incredulous Judge Chhabria: “If Facebook promises not to disseminate anything that you send to your hundred friends, and Facebook breaks that promise and disseminates your photographs to a thousand corporations, that would not be a serious privacy invasion?"
Reflecting a viewpoint that Facebook considers almost no scenario at all a potential "privacy invasion," Snyder responded:
“Facebook does not consider that to be actionable, as a matter of law under California law.”
Thus Facebook admitted in court that even when the company gives a user the impression it will not share private information which that user has not authorized for public view, should the platform violate this, it is still not illegal nor does it violate Facebook's own standards.
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