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Prominent Iraqi historian Hisham al-Hashimi was walking to his car outside his home in eastern Baghdad on July 6, 2020 when a group of The gunman rushed at him on a motorbike and fired five times. at close range. By the time he reached the hospital, Al-Hashimi was dead.
Al-Hashimi was often an outspoken critic of the country’s militias. deeply tied to various power factions in Iraqfrom ISIS to government and opposition politicians.
In the months leading up to his death, Viral posts on Facebook and other social media Multiple sites have accused al-Hashimi of being a spy for the US, Israeli or British forces and conspiring to further destabilize Iraq. At the time, Iraq was experiencing its largest civil uprising since the US invasion in 2003.
Al-Hashimi said one of his close friends, Aus Al-Saadi, the founder of the non-profit Tech4Peace, was Meta’s “trusted partner” and that he would take down content such as threats to his own life. was in direct contact with Meta to assist with In September 2019, Al-Hashimi contacted Al-Saadi and asked if he could help remove harmful posts targeting him on Facebook.
Hisham Al-Hashimi contacted his friend Aus Al-Saadi, a Meta Trusted Partner, and asked him to remove the post that endangered his life.
Photo credit: Aws al-Saadi
Mr. Al-Saadi did what he could, but Mr. Mehta’s response was inconsistent. Some posts were deleted within a day, while others sat for a week.
An April 2019 post falsely claiming al-Hashimi was an al-Qaeda leader was never removed. Al Saadi reported the post, but Mehta said the post did not violate company policy.
On 6 July 2020, the day of Al-Hashimi’s death, Al-Saadi replied, “They have killed him now.”
“One of the reasons for the killing was meth,” Al-Saadi told an insider.
Draft report shows problems within Meta’s network of trusted partners all have one thing in common
Al-Saadi is not alone. Facebook and its parent company Meta have come under fire for failing to manage the platform properly.
In many countries, Meta relies on reports from local civil society groups and experts to flag hate speech and misinformation on Facebook. The Trusted Partners program gained momentum in the late 2010s after Meta was accused of being involved in the escalation of genocide in Myanmar. The company now sees the program as essential to its moderate strategy in a politically difficult country like Iraq.
A draft report from the media nonprofit Internews, obtained by an insider through Trusted Partners, concludes that Meta’s Trusted Partners program blunder puts people at grave risk.
Internews is also one of Meta’s largest partners, receiving funding from Meta for various projects.
Meta did not respond to a request for comment on Al-Hashimi’s death or Internews’ report.
However, three pages of answers were provided to Internews questions that were included in the draft report. In these comments, Meta acknowledged that COVID-19 has had a “significant impact” on its operations, resulting in a “reduced reporting experience” for trusted partners from 2019 to 2021. rice field.
“During this period, our content review team is operating at limited capacity and will respond to reports from our trusted partner channels as quickly as we would like and as quickly as we have been. We couldn’t do it,” the company said. “During these difficult times, we prioritized the most harmful content for our team to review, including imminent physical harm and risk of violence.”
The stakes here are individual protection, how countries can sustain their political systems, or risks to public health.Paul Barrett, Deputy Director, Center for Business and Human Rights, New York University Stern School of Business
Meta added that it expects response times to improve in 2022, taking between one and five days to respond. More Complex Cases – Reports from trusted partners are often complex and can result in longer response times, Mehta said.
Meta says it has 465 organizations enrolled in its Trusted Partner Program and has at least one Trusted Partner in 122 countries. Meta previously told insiders that the program was launched in 2012, but said in comments to Internews that it had not formalized the process until 2019.
The Internews report echoed the findings of an insider investigation earlier this year, showing how Meta ignored alarms issued by its trusted partners in Ethiopia as two violent conflicts were underway in the country. Or, it was revealed that the response was catastrophically delayed.
Meta’s response to trusted partners around the world was ‘unstable’
The report is based on a survey of 24 trusted partners, including Al Saadi, who operate globally reporting hate speech and other harmful content and immediate threats. In practice, the response time is greatly delayed, suggesting that it faces the problem of “instability”. for people’s lives.
Partners sometimes waited weeks, if not months, for a response from Meta, the report found. In some cases, partners did not receive any response at all. Frustration with this has led some partners to abandon the program.
Al-Saadi and other partners found a workaround. That was to appeal directly to his Meta personal contacts via WhatsApp and Signal. This was often more successful than dedicated reporting channels for trusted partners.
Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said the consequences are often too dire when meta ignores trusted partners.
“The bets here are on individual protection, how countries can sustain their political systems, or risks to public health,” Barrett said.
Our partners are investigating everything from political hate speech and disinformation to vaccine misinformation.
The only exception was Ukraine. According to the report, partners have seen faster response times from Meta, averaging around 72 hours. In contrast, during the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, partners could wait months without a response.
I think it stands to reason that if partners are happy with the program, they will report back more often.Rafiq Copeland, Senior Advisor, Internews Global Platform Accountability
Rafic Copeland, a senior adviser to Internews and one of the authors of the report, said Meta did not provide an explanation for the difference in response times between its Ukrainian and Ethiopian partners.
“I think you have to assume it’s a matter of priorities and resources,” Copeland said.
The Internews report also said that some of the failures to reach trusted partners and remove content may be due to the program’s “significant lack of resources and manpower.” , said the problem was exacerbated by the company’s recent job cuts.
Internews has found that participating in Trusted Partner programs often increases the risk to Trusted Partners themselves. This corroborates the stories of several trusted partners in Ethiopia who have told insiders that they have received death threats as a result of their work.
Trusted partners around the world are retiring this program
In an email seen by an insider, Mehta sent his condolences following Al-Hashimi’s death in Iraq and asked him to attend a meeting where he could provide more feedback on the company’s processes. I requested Mr. Saadi.
At the meeting, Al-Saadi said he was distraught over his friend’s death and told the company, “Why are you asking for my opinion when you’re not going to do anything?”
Over the next few weeks, grief-stricken and reconsidering what he could have done differently, he temporarily stopped reporting.
Iraqi demonstrators walk in front of a poster of Hisham al-Hashimi in Baghdad.
Tair Al Sudani
According to Internews, trusted partners submitted only about 1,000 reports to Meta each month.
“The partners we spoke to were shocked to hear the numbers,” Copeland said, adding that the numbers were not collected from reports submitted through informal channels such as WhatsApp and Signal. We acknowledged that this figure may be an underestimate as there are no “Mainly because they thought the slow response times were related to the high number of cases.”
Not all of those cases are covered.
“When you look at only 33 cases per day, you can see that system failures are not directly related to volume,” Copeland said.
One reason for this low number may be that partners are not using the program due to their lack of experience with the program.
“I think it stands to reason that if partners were more satisfied with the program, they would report more often,” Copeland said.
Meta has no way for trusted partners to easily escalate reports when someone’s life is in danger.
The report found Meta’s policies were opaque and inconsistent when partners issued warnings about posts threatening activists, journalists and other human rights defenders. Partners have sometimes received responses to take no action. However, the decisions were often reversed when they appealed through Meta’s personal contacts.
Insiders have previously warned of the dangers of viral hate speech targeted at Professor Meareg Amaré by Ethiopia’s Trusted Partners, both through Trusted Partners’ channels and a subsequent Zoom meeting with Meta, but the platform Reported no action. The investigation is now key evidence in a $1.6 billion hate speech lawsuit against Facebook.
In February, Al-Saadi himself was the target of a viral misinformation claiming to be a US collaborator in the effort to destabilize Iraq. He knew that such accusations could put his life at risk, as happened to his friend al-Hashimi. Al-Saadi reported the post to Mehta on February 17. A week later, he said he would escalate the issue to his personal Meta representative and look into it, but did not follow up. These posts he removed on April 18, two months after they were first reported.
Mehta’s trusted partner Aus al-Saadi outside the Erbil Citadel in Iraq.
Aus Al Saadi
“We need a case management system that can identify really urgent cases and deal with them quickly, but it doesn’t seem to exist anyway,” Copeland said.
Al-Saadi, who now lives in the Netherlands, said he would have been more afraid for his life if he were still in Iraq.
“You laugh, but you cry about it at the same time,” he said.
Partners want systems overhauled
Copeland is hopeful that Meta will revamp its Trusted Partner Program. Internews said Meta needs to redesign its program by working more directly with trusted partners.
Internews hopes this will help build a trusted partner channel that provides better communication, greater transparency and faster response times.
“I think Meta needs to work on program reform and true co-design,” Copeland said. “So far, we have not seen such an effort, but it is a work in progress.”
Additional report by Reem Makhoul