Facebook: Regulating Hate Speech in the Asia Pacific

Abstract

This study was funded as part of the Facebook Content Policy Research on Social Media Awards to examine Facebook’s hate speech regulation challenges in the Asia Pacific. It maps hate speech law in five case study countries in the Asia Pacific region - India, Myanmar, Indonesia, The Philippines and Australia - to understand how this problem is framed nationally, and what regulatory gaps exist that might enable hate speech to proliferate on Facebook. It presents an ideal definition of hate speech derived from scholarly literature and compares that to Facebook’s policy versions in its Community Standards and editorial procedures, to establish if the company’s policy could be improved. It then explores how Facebook hate speech policies and procedures seek to moderate this harmful content, by examining corporate literature, conducting interviews with Facebook staff, and mapping the organisational response to this problem. Finally, given the level of discrimination and vilification experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer identifying people across Asia, the study analyses data from the public Facebook pages of major LGBTQ+ groups in our case study countries to examine the incidence of hate speech that had escaped Facebook’s automated filters. It also presents interviews with page administrators of these groups that reveal their conceptions and management of hate speech, including their experience of reporting hate posts to Facebook. Along with expert online community management input from the Australian Community Managers network, these civil society interviews provide a framework for understanding the ‘regulatory literacy’ of those who are at the frontline of Facebook’s efforts to minimise hate on its platform. The report recommends Facebook: • extend its consultation with protected groups on their experience and management of hate speech, • develop and publicise its trusted partners channel, so that individuals and organisations have a direct hate speech reporting partner for crisis reporting issues. • hold an annual regional hate speech roundtable for stakeholder groups, and • recognise the role of page administrators as critical gatekeepers of hate speech content, supporting their improved regulatory literacy via training and education.