Facebook and Instagram publish rights protection report

Targetowner facebook as well as Instagrampublished its first annual human rights response amid frequent criticism of social media for its impact on civil liberties and democracy.

The report, which spans 2020 and 2021, looks at issues such as the decisions these social networks have made to combat misinformation about COVID-19.

It also includes previously published research on, for example, US and Philippine elections, and addresses the issue of data protection.

“The report explains how our data policies, our law enforcement response team and our due process reviews work together to protect people from illegal or excessive government oversight,” the Silicon Valley giant said in a statement.

Data protection

Targetlike Google, has recently been questioned by politicians, non-governmental organizations and journalists about the data protection of women seeking abortion in the United States, after that country’s Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to process last month.

Abortion rights groups fear that tech companies will be forced to turn over the data of women who seek medical attention in states where abortion is currently banned or severely restricted.

“Our human rights policy indicates that we must strictly interpret government requests,” said Miranda Sissons, director of human rights at Target.

“When there is a gap between local and international standards, we must try to maintain international standards as much as possible,” he added, without specifying what this means for US citizens, including women seeking abortion.

The report mentions that if the request does not comply with the law or regulations Targetthe company will “oppose” it.

Among the issues covered in the paper, it also “highlights the important role that end-to-end encryption plays in WhatsApp in protecting the privacy of people, in particular journalists and human rights activists, and how we extend it to other messaging applications.” , adds a statement from Target.

Through the years Target has been widely criticized for a business model that, according to a number of critics, prioritizes extremist content in an attempt to gain user attention.

Its managers have taken a number of measures to combat misinformation and improve content moderation.

But the company’s reputation was damaged after Frances Haugen, who worked in Facebook. The IT department has leaked internal documents and has said several times that the company is putting its profits ahead of user safety. (AFP)

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