Meta is committed to respecting the human rights of the people who use and are impacted by our products. Meta’s Human Rights Team works to oversee and bring life to these commitments across the company.
Meta’s Human Rights Policy
Our Corporate Human Rights Policy, adopted in March 2021, serves as the foundation of our human rights commitments. Grounded in the UNGPs, our obligations as a member of the Global Network Initiative, and key international human rights instruments, the Policy guides our work to respect human rights across the company.
The policy covers relevant Meta policies and programs; human rights due diligence practices and disclosure; remedy; protection for human rights defenders; and governance, oversight and accountability. It is embedded as part of our company Code of Conduct.
GNI Commitments
Meta joined the Global Network Initiative (GNI) in 2013. The GNI is a multi-stakeholder initiative, whose members commit to upholding rights to freedom of expression and privacy as defined in a key human rights treaty, the ICCPR.
As a GNI member, Meta commits to respect freedom of expression and privacy, aligned with the standards contained in a key human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Like other members, our GNI commitments give us a practical framework for making responsible decisions when we face overbroad government restrictions on freedom of expression and privacy rights. The GNI is also an important learning forum, since it brings together academics, investors, civil society, and companies.
We are regularly and independently assessed on the implementation of our GNI commitments; for more details, see the latest GNI Public Assessment Report.
Human Rights Due Diligence
Meta’s Corporate Human Rights Policy and our GNI commitments emphasize it's important for us to develop methods of identifying, managing, and mitigating our potential human rights risks. Those methods are called "due diligence".
The potential human rights impact of Meta’s technologies varies significantly across location, context and communities. For this reason, we identify and prioritize the most "salient" (important) human rights issues according to UNGP criteria, which include factors such as scope, scale, remediability and likelihood.
We seek to identify vulnerable or marginalized groups and engage, meaningfully, to hear concerns and create solutions. We are also committed to engaging proactively with our supply chain partners and responding quickly to challenges as they arise.
As part of our human rights due diligence efforts, we use a range of methodologies, including human rights impact assessments. Insights and actions from our human rights due diligence are published annually in our Annual Report; highlights are reflected on our Impact page.
Human Rights Defender Fund
The Human Rights Defender Fund and Journalist Safely Initiative are designed to support individuals who are targets of harassment, persecution and prosecution because of their valiant activities in support of human rights. This includes members of vulnerable groups advocating for their rights, such as professional and citizen journalists, non-violent political activists and any member of the public who bravely raises a human rights concern.
The fund will help pay for new devices and security technologies, temporary relocation and emergency and safety assistance.
It will also provide mental health support to human rights defenders and enable the development of peer-to-peer support programs, and a global network of practitioners and mental health institutions. The fund will be distributed over a 2-year period and will be managed independently.
Community Standards
Our Community Standards are the policies that guide the content and behaviors that are and aren't allowed on our platforms. They are constantly evolving. We look to international human rights standards and experts when developing these policies, supported by a robust stakeholder engagement process.
Stakeholder Engagement
We strive to meaningfully engage with potentially affected groups and other stakeholders through our Stakeholder Engagement Program. We regularly reach out to a diverse range of human rights groups and vulnerable communities around the world when working on issues such as freedom of expression, hate speech, misinformation, privacy and other issues that are likely to have a significant human rights impact.
Oversight Board
The Oversight Board was created to help Meta answer some of the most challenging questions and decisions around freedom of expression online such as what to take down, what to leave up and why. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right.
The Board is an independent body that people can appeal to if they disagree with decisions made about content on Facebook or Instagram. In addition to implementing the Oversight Board’s binding decisions on individual pieces of content, consistent with the Board Charter, the Board also provides non-binding policy recommendations to Meta, to which it responds within 30 days. These recommendations and Meta’s responses are hosted in Meta’s Transparency Center.
Transparency Center
We believe that transparency is central to the effective exercise of human rights and accountability. Our Transparency Center serves as a hub for all our integrity and transparency work.
The Transparency Center is home to our Community Standards and other policies; information on our approach to significant challenges like misinformation and election integrity; data on how we enforce our policies and respond to requests from governments to restrict content or disclose user data; details of our engagement with the independent Oversight Board, and information about government-ordered disruptions to our services.